One approach to prevent people from drawing racist inferences from standardized test scores or other statistics is to adopt the French policy of not collecting or keeping any race statistics. That would allow us to preserve meritocracy without promoting racism or depriving highly qualified applicants of the limited educational opportunities that will help them contribute the most to society.

That sounds good, but having no demographic stats is the opposite of sunlight. I don't believe it makes systemic racism go away, it just sweeps it under the rug.

Racism is a belief though. If we can remove a way that people come to the belief through statistical evidence we can make people believe it less. Keeping statistics can only work to provide evidence for the racists that all races are not of equal ability.

But like, I'm not a good soccer player at all and I don't harbor a belief that I should be placed on a soccer team to the exclusion of others who are much better (as opposed to just marginally better).