From a business perspective it must be more lucrative to select candidates by their cultural projection and the money connections than on the basis of academic potential.

I suppose that is true for MIT, for mainstream media, and for US corporations.

We can compare the audience of an flamewar post about racism in US, vs the readership of a paper on fixed point theorems, and it makes sense that organizations that don't care about science like US universities choose to favor the former.

MIT undergraduates in the class of 2024 are 42% Asian. White is 39%. What makes you think MIT discriminates against Asian students?

Out of ignorance - how so?