To me - very simply put - merit doesn’t make much sense when one set of people didn’t get any of the opportunities the other set did. It’s like comparing height with one person standing atop a stool. The nuance here is to find the lost potential in marks and tests due to a lack of opportunity. Race is a crude proxy and it really doesn’t have to be based on just race. But it’d mean admins spend more time interviewing and verifying people’s background and make subjective decisions based on that.
