I'd previously bought into the meritocracy argument, but was eventually convinced to update those beliefs when presented with a new perspective. If you only look at the end-result, then meritocracy makes sense. But the trajectory which each person takes in order to arrive at that destination can vary wildly depending on how priviledged of a lifestyle you were born into.
It's entirely possible to pick up and develop the required skills while on the job in many cases. Companies ultimately end up benefiting from this by spreading out the responsibility of training people, which results in a stronger more robust workforce.
If you want to account for privilege, that's fine. But there are much better proxies than "skin color". For example, if you want to reduce poverty, why write a check to people of a certain race (on the basis that people of that race are more likely to be poor) rather than just writing a check to poor people directly?
The problem is that people are obsessed with the median person of a given race (and how these "median people" compare with each other) that they project these median personas onto individuals. In other words, they treat individuals as fungible tokens of their race. It doesn't matter if a black candidate has had an easy suburban life and a white candidate grew up in poverty, the DEI lens just sees a black candidate and a white candidate, and the perennial social imperative to bring the median black person and the median white person closer to parity.
It's entirely possible to pick up and develop the required skills while on the job in many cases. Companies ultimately end up benefiting from this by spreading out the responsibility of training people, which results in a stronger more robust workforce.