43% of all white students at Harvard are legacy, athletes, directly related to faculty, or have family that donated to the university. That number falls to 16% or lower for black, latino, and asian students.
75% of that aforementioned group of white students would not have been admitted had it been based on merit. 70 percent of all legacy applicants are white, compared with 40 percent of all applicants who do not fall under those categories.
Why does the average applicant need to be penalized when their grandparents legally could not attend these institutions? I think it's pretty obvious why people have such reactions to DEI when it's literally just "legacies for people who legally were barred from participating".