TJliberal "The issue is that by the time someone is 18 years old, the time for this sort of development has past. While one may have the capacity to catch up, university will not be a suitable environment for this purpose." - I agree, which is why I am not proposing to tilt the scales to the extent that the university student demographics match those of the national population, at least not in the short term.
"Regardless of race or socioeconomic disadvantage, one must compete immediately with everyone in the classroom on an equal footing." - Of course, which is surely the reason our universities have (or had) bridging courses aimed at disadvantaged students.
"After that, your success is determined purely on merit." - I agree there, if we're talking within a single university. The problem I'm pointing out is that while everybody writes the same matric paper, it isn't really a single standard, as weird as that probably sounds to you. That's because the exam is really part of a system that includes not-so-standardized components, like individual schools that may be better or worse at preparing students for the matric paper.
"While this may seem harsh, the facts speak for themselves; white students are far more likely to complete their studies than their black counterparts" - Yes, and this is compatible with my view that currently black students may be over-handicapped (i.e. their "disadvantage level" is being overestimated by admissions processes). I agree with you that they're being "affirmed" too much, but I don't agree with you in that I think they should be "affirmed" to some degree more than zero. I.e. while currently black students are given maybe a 20% advantage in their admissions scores relative to whites, I think it should maybe be 5% while you seem to think it should be zero. My suspicion is that if you put it at zero, you would find, if you controlled for parental income and other confounders, that more black students would complete their studies than whites. But you'd also have a near civil war on your hands. And in all this I'm using "black" and "white" largely as a shothand for "went to a horrible school" (too often in disadvantaged "black" areas) and "went to a decent school", respectively.
"One another level, different requirements based on race can become belittling." - I agree, when the difference in requirements is excessive. If the difference were "optimal" as I've argued for, the "handicap" wouldn't actually amount to an unfair advantage, others wouldn't resent the unfairness, and they would in theory respect your achievements fully (unless they're just plain racists unable to parse black success).
I also agree about getting basic education right. "Upstream problems can only be solved upstream." Dicking around with downstream results is just "equality theater".