In labor markets, sure. But isn’t merit for a youth largely built through education? Certainly feels like full-blown meritocracy without accounting for equality of opportunity is for some a self-fulfilling prophecy and for others a catch-22. At any rate probably a recipe for supercharging wealth inequality.
I would agree that most would probably fail that test, does they mean we need blanket bans on equity programs or more effective ones?
American in particular needs nourishment funding for all socioecon/demographic classes.
To put it simply, a poor white student from rural Alabama only needs a proper accent and a good suit to blend in with the upper-classes. However, a black student only needs to lose access to their parents money and they immediately have a longer harder uphill battle to fight against racism which will presume them to be uneducated, underperforming, and generationally poor unless they work 2x as hard to prove it wrong.
That said...
I do think there's a danger in supporting DEI programs simply because they have good outcomes (which other posters are doing). If a group achieves your end-results but doesn't have your philosophy, then my life experience (e.g. MAGA) has shown that they will become the enemy that you don't see until it's too late.
Just because you disagree with a particular form of DEI (and to put my personal cards on the table, I am somewhere between indifferent to moderately against race based affirmative action) doesn't mean the concept of DEI is not important.
In fact, as we can see in this thread here, most people who say they are against DEI are in fact in favor because they do recognize that, at the very least, current higher educational practices are highly tilted towards those who are rich and those whose parents already have college degrees.
Maybe you guys need colleges looking only at grades and SAT scores, and no questions about race on any of the forms. This is how most of the world does it, and there is no need for DEI offices.
If the student loans were cut down a bit, prices would probably go down too for everyone. (or maybe even have a taxpayer paid education system, like most of the rest of the world).