I don't really understand what it means to not use race as a criteria. If we're comparing Italians and Irish, and Irish are mostly left handed and Italians mostly right, and we know that right handers are more likely to pay back their loans, then presumably my race/ethnicity blind program will favor right handers over left handers, but the consequence will be favoring Italians over Irish.

When more variables come up and get more complicated it seems like it would be impossible to say "You're based on race" versus "You're based on a multitude of factors, several of which correlate to race, and consequently you give more or better loans to race X over Y."