> On paper meritocracy sounds reasonably fair but in practice I believe we'll find it to be otherwise.
In practice, the non-connected/wealthy Whites and Asians are faced with a choice between 'meritocracy' with all the caveats you list, or a system that still has all those caveats, but also actively racially discriminates against them.
In fact, given how under-represented Whites are at the Ivies, all those connections and wealth fall far short of counter-balancing discrimination against them, so it's not just the lower-class Whites that are made 2nd-class citizens: https://archive.org/details/ivy-league-demographics
Does it actively discriminate or is that just a talking point that is repeated?
Presumably what we want to say is if we have 100 children with similar economic and educational backgrounds and experiences and 70 are of type A, 25 type B, and 5 are type C then when it comes to the college body there ought to be relatively similar representation by those ratios.
That is for every 100 students in college, 70ish are type A, 25ish are type B, and 5ish are type C.
However that's with the premise that each type's makeup of the whole is also having a similar background and experience which we also know is likely not to be true.
So if you wanted to be "more fair" you'd have to include socioeconomic conditions each applicant is coming from rather than just purely by particular racial makeup.
So if you have Low income, middle, high, and 300 students, then take 100 from each income bracket, then within those brackets aim for the racial/cultural make-up be reflective of those income brackets make-up.
I believe that Asian Americans are actively discriminated against in elite college admissions in the US (as mentioned in the article here). This has resulted in several court cases with mixed findings, but even in the 'wins' to support the status quo, it seems to me that there was fairly strong evidence of discrimination.
In practice, the non-connected/wealthy Whites and Asians are faced with a choice between 'meritocracy' with all the caveats you list, or a system that still has all those caveats, but also actively racially discriminates against them.
In fact, given how under-represented Whites are at the Ivies, all those connections and wealth fall far short of counter-balancing discrimination against them, so it's not just the lower-class Whites that are made 2nd-class citizens: https://archive.org/details/ivy-league-demographics