A good thought experiment is replacing "Black and Brown" by "Caucasian". Not saying they should not do it, but there is an actual discrimination (a non-black and brown company won't have access to this).
It's almost as if investing in communities that have been underserved, could somehow, trickle through the economy as a whole at a disproportionally high rate of return. You know, as opposed to investing it where monetary wealth is already largely concentrated.
Regarding your second point, it is bot really relevant and if the project will “deliver returns” or not. Setting up a program that explicitly only invests in anglo-american harvard grads would probably give good returns too, but it would still be pretty racist.