There is a popular misconception that racial preferences in college admissions and personnel matters simply help to decide between applicants of essentially the same academic level. This is not true, and here is just one quantifiable evidence of this:
<< A 2009 Princeton study showed Asian-Americans had to score 140 points higher on their SATs than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics and 450 points higher than blacks to have the same chance of admission to leading universities. >>
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/white-students-unfair-advantage-in-admissions.html
Sure enough, the article in NY Times concentrates on the unfair advantage of white applicants over the Asians (yes, it is unfair as well, of course), that's their narrative. But the numbers are there, and so you can easily see that and average black applicant is admitted with 310 points less on their SAT than an average white one. That's is quite a lot. And, on top of that, please pay attention to the "leading universities" part of the above quote. This is important. Apparently, there are not enough well qualified black applicants even for the top schools.
One may wonder, what would happen if schools and colleges stopped using racial preferences in the admission process. Luckily, we have a way of knowing., as there are still some schools that base their admission process entirely on qualification of the applicants and do not take race into the account. Here is one example: