> race was essentially used as a tie breaker between equally qualified candidates.
That’s demonstrably untrue. At Harvard, an Asian candidate at the top decile of academic index scores had roughly the same admissions rate as a black candidate in the 4th decile: https://nypost.com/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-acti...
The candidates were basically competing in entirely different lanes based on race.
Then that's wrong, Harvard should not do it, and it would be good to try to create/enforce regulations that prevent them from doing it. However, that doesn't mean that all DEI efforts are bad.
There would be almost no black people at Harvard if they did not do it.