That's not the point. The point is that when white people say they're "for meritocracy" they're full of shit. Not on purpose, but still full of shit.
So this article seems to be just about spreading division among racial lines.
That appears to be the probable source article. The date is correct and the experimental methods are as described in the Inside Higher Ed piece. That source article is available from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Samson4/publicati... .
The conclusion section of the paper starts:
> The current study presents three main results. First, how Whites adjust the importance that a criterion of academic merit should have depends upon which ethnoracial outgroups Whites are considering. This finding weakens the argument that White commitment to meritocracy is purely based on principle, since the importance given to particular meritocratic criteria, here grade point average, varies depending upon the outgroups under consideration and the extent of the group threat they pose to Whites.
This appears to be aligned with gant's statement, though couched in the academic phrasing "This finding weakens the argument" rather than "full of shit." The title is more direct, with "Malleable White Attitudes Towards Academic Merit".
Since gant's comment is in rough agreement with both the Inside Higher Ed piece and the original paper, I do not agree with your assessment that "that's not the point at all."
There's already endless evidence that people are full of shit, one shouldn't presume that somebody arguing for or against anything is doing it with the noblest of intentions. That should be irrelevant to judging the argument in question.