alt Hacker NewsLegacy and donor admissions aren't the gotcha against race neutral admissions that you think they are. In fact, they go hand in hand. It's not a coincidence that the universities with strong legacy preferences all practiced affirmative action. Legacy students actually have slightly better grades and SAT scores than average, but this would unlikely to be the case if they used purely merit based admissions.
I didn’t say it to be a gotcha. But let’s admit that legacy admissions and athletes represent a non meritocratic social goal, and then ask why those are legitimate social goals but racial diversity is not one?