It has everything to do with the topic. If you want to look at disparity, look at the disparity of how blacks have been treated as inferior throughout U.S. history. Are you surprised that there's a ripple effect?
Don't know that you're following the topic. Here's a hypothetical. Let's say we want a baseball game. The first team will be selected primarily on RBIs. The second team primarily on having blond hair. Of course, the first team may have blond players, but the players were selected for their RBIs not hair color. Do you imagine the game would be competitive? The 1969 prediction is that the blond team, selected primarily for hair color not sports talent, would compensate for the disparity in skill by demanding, perhaps, that there be more blond referees and that the game become less competitive - at least for them (e.g., a blond player's foul will be considered a hit). After all, there is a history of discrimination against blonds. Think of all those blond jokes and stereotypes of mental incompetence. That creates an oppressive atmosphere which affects the blonds' ability to compete.
And this, essentially, has happened on college campuses where racial group membership determines the difficulty of admission. It's no secret that if you're East Asian you need to greatly outscore everyone else to get in. On the other hand, if you're black, well, the admission bar is set a bit lower. But when these two groups admitted on different criteria occupy the same academic space, the pre-existing disparity becomes conspicuous.
Why can't group A compete on the level of group B? Instead of acknowledging that this is due to a well intended but flawed admission policy, the fault is cast elsewhere (insert you favorite "ism" here) and various race-based panaceas are demanded.
