The way I think about it in the case of A and B are equal merit or extremely close: on some level, you must decide if you accept or reject the underlying ideas

The way I think about it in the case of A and B are equal merit or extremely close: on some level, you must decide if you accept or reject the underlying ideas that 1. There are groups of people 2. Some groups are in better positions than others 3. There are historical reasons for claim 2 4. The people in the worse off group today, did not cause this historical reason, yet still suffer from it (be it done by or to their predecessors, doesn't matter). 5. a just world is one in which all groups, when given the opportunity, are represented in positions of power at the expected rates. So let's say I run a school that generates successful powerful people regularly. I always get a greater than capacity nunmber of applicants scoring perfectly. Some might argue that random choice is the most fair - but I'm not interested in being fair to the better off group at the expense of furthering what I believe to be the creation of a just world. It is of no concern that some white upper class student didn't get in. If I go by random choice that group has an outsized chance of winning at the expense of the worse offs, because we would expect them to have a non-representational ratio of applicants to the worse. off group. Say, 15:1 or something. Oh but that's not fair to the individual, you might say. Well, groups are made of individuals and so my belief about group representation in a world of equal opportunity isn't over ridden. It's for _those_ individuals in the worse off group. So I see little to no problem in caseas of equal merit being decided with an explicit favouring. Furthermore, where the merit is not equal but the imbalance in merit is solidly explained by the inherent deficits of the worse off group, I see no problem in leaning that too (think extra curricular - captain of sailing team in high school and attended expensive code boostcamps in summers, or something). Two activities that would be unjustly unavailable to the worse off group.