historically underrepresented = minorities - Asian-Americans + white women
Imagine if a policy were instituted that benefited minorities, then someone proposed that it should be tweaked so that it didn't help Asian-Americans so much and helped white women instead. They'd be laughed out of the room.
Engineering is one of the few fields Asians in the US have been able to do well in. Consider law, where Asian-Americans make 10% of graduates at top-30 schools but only 6% of federal law clerks and 4% of state law clerks; by comparison, the numbers for white Americans are 58% graduating and then 82% and 80% becoming law clerks. [1]
And now policies like this are in vogue--removing one of the last reliable paths to the middle class for immigrants and the children of immigrants.
The phrase "historically underrepresented" should be a red flag. It neglects context and is virtually a euphemism for discrimination against Asian Americans and for (and it feels so bizarre to be typing this) white women.
[1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/07/31/538299755...