[athenaRising]

"Well, if we follow the meritocratic ideology that everyone has the same opportunities available to them, it would be a natural conclusion" - no, there's always endogenous interactions. Protected class identity isn't randomized.

"There is nothing that inherently causes a specific skin color or gender to have the ability to capitalize on an opportunity." The word "inherently" is doing all the work here by making acknowledgement of endogeneity look bigoted. But whether any of the thousands of factors that produce an outcome are "inherent," whatever that means, is irrelevant. You should always expect endogenous interactions if you haven't used a methodology that prevents it, like randomized blind experiments, difference in difference, instrumental variables, etc.