It’s pretty much an open secret that they do this, in fact California lawmakers are actively trying to change their state constitution in order to allow for discrimination based on race (hmm wonder if that could backfire) as it’s currently illegal for their state owned colleges to do so. Unsurprisingly UC Berkeley has a high portion of Asian students currently, Ivy League schools however clearly suppress their Asian intake and artificially inflate the numbers of Black and Latino students with a healthy dose of tokenism/low expectations.
The irony is that it’s mostly superficial, majority of the black students at Harvard aren’t proper “African Americans” or descendants of American slaves but rather the descendants of more recent immigrants. Unsurprisingly the son/daughter of say a Nigerian Engineer and Doctor who emigrated together as highly skilled workers can get in, especially with lowered requirements based on their race.
Of those who actually are African American they’re likely mostly a bit better off than usual... middle class, from suburbs etc..
Most of this isn’t going to help any poor kid from South Chicago or Detroit, it’s just visible race based diversity as a box ticking exercise and involves throwing Asian students under the bus to achieve it.
They don’t actually care about any sort of fairness etc... plenty of white students who do get in are legacy students, parents were say Harvard grads too and in some cases left a hefty donation and made sure the dean knows about it so their son/daughter’s application gets processed correctly. In extreme cases where the son/daughter is very mediocre parents might need to pay for an entire building!
