DEI isn’t about using race as a proxy for disadvantage. Universities went to the Supreme Court and told them that they can’t use lack of “wealth, education, and opportunity” instead of race, because what they wanted was more people with particular skin colors, not more people who were poor, etc. This is literally in Harvard’s brief in SFFA. See pp. 52-54: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1199/230739/202.... There’s nothing to call that other than racist, in the most widely understood sense of the term.