You're not wrong, but you're taking the textbook definition too far.

This whole topics rests on the premise that "positive discrimination" is acceptable or even necessary due to historical injustice.

An analysis that reverts to "racism is always and everywhere bad" will fail to reconcile, even if you believe it.

> the textbook definition

Not contradicting you, but FWIW there seem to be a half-dozen-each implicit definitions of 'racism' and 'racist' floating around society these days, and each might have widely-varying senses of magnitude or extremity associated with them (from innocuous to extreme). It becomes difficult to parse logic and moral logic around these words, when various interpretations are taken into account.

I agree with your point about diversity beyond ethnicity and race in some regards. I 100% agree schools should try for more income diversity for example. However other criteria you listed are meaningless. I don't see a benefit to height diversity or ugliness/beauty diversity. Other examples of yours also serve to conflict with your first point. There are some people who get rejected from Yale who would otherwise get into Yale if they could play basketball well or if their parent attended Yale. Is that discrimination against those people? I tend to think not. Treating everyone exactly the same isn't always the fairest solution in every situation.

Also your NBA example doesn't fit because it clearly falls into the category when you need the top X basketball players. I don't think needing the top X students is or should be the goal of college admissions. The goal of a basketball team is to defeat other teams in competition. It is inherently a zero sum game. The goal of a university is to educate the population. It is not a zero sum game and having a diverse student body actually works to support that goal.

> Imagine if an NBA team said "Sorry, we can't hire you, we have too many black people playing right now"

The NBA does something similar with positions

If they need a backup center they’ll get a backup center regardless if a better scoring point guard is available

No, I think role value is different. Sport teams are doing what will make them will the most games by getting the role the need. Sometimes the players in the position in abundance will be good enough to make adjustments to offset the bad ratio, (see the center position for the rockets this year) but it's a rare scenario.

For a software comparison, it is like finding a Data Engineer for a Front End position. Sure if the Data Engineer is super smart, you can have him or her switch roles for a bit; but if the needs are immediate, like they are in the NBA, it is not going to produce the best results.

What if diversity is a role to be played at college?

What if the student body is part customer, part product?

Colleges give out sports scholarships all the time to unqualified student athletes- a trade off from the academic excellence purity test - because it enhances the college’s value.

How can those be OK but diversity scholarships wrong?