[plagiarist]

"For sake of diversity." If you take a slice of the smartest and most capable Americans, do you expect to see that it roughly matches American demographics? If college acceptance doesn't look like that, is there a problem?

[raxxorraxor]

I don't think that is what anyone could call sufficient evidence.

But even if the reason is economic disparities, which might be a consequence of past discrimination, it is still questionable if that alone can justify discrimination today. You are in any case discriminating innocents in that case and you just found another reason to discriminate on the basis on skin color.

I heard arguments that the absence of women in computer science would be an indication of discrimination and the prevalence of sexism. A similar case of insufficient evidence and one that lead to false accusations. Accusations that could have convinced a few women to look into other industries for that matter.

I believe the case for racism is much stronger, but I still disagree with the means if it could be proven without any doubt.

[Balgair]

The law of large numbers would indicate that yes, a cross section of the 'smartest' should have the same racial make-up as the population. If it doesn't, then something is rotten in the state of Denmark, so to speak.

[david38]

This is absolutely false. Cultural upbringing isn’t uniform across all cultures. This has more to do with higher education than anything else. Look at the percentage of Nobel prize winners who are Jewish. Look at the Jewish population.

[dazilcher]

If the applicant pipeline does not match such an idealized distribution and you attempt to fix it at this stage, would "the smartest and most capable Americans" still apply to the admitted cohort?

[antisthenes]

Genetics and childhood.

So no, I wouldn't expect it to match American demographics.