The obvious advantage of Jewish culture is (in part) its ancient tradition of demanding literacy from everyone. East Asian cultures also place a high value on literacy, and the Confucian emphasis on social harmony tends to promote an ideal of “self-cultivation”.
I think the real challenge here is that within the American “melting pot,” one particular group has a tragic history of cultural devastation, and no amount of money or assistance from outsiders can rebuild a strong culture—it can only come from within. In fact, outside interference is likely to obstruct this process.
But the fact that they share the same skin color with African-Americans is unlikely to help the latter. Common color does not mean common culture (as any white American traveling around Ukraine or Caucasus Mountains can find out quite easily) and rich and educated Nigerian-Americans live in a different world than descendants of slaves.
Paradoxically, a color-based affirmative action may help the already advantaged fresh immigrants at the cost of reducing the chances of one group it was supposed to help.
(The same process, albeit on a much smaller scale, is taking place in the Czech Republic. We have a Vietnamese minority that began as convenience store owners, but their children are rising fast into the educated elite of the country.)
But that process will be fraught with a lot of conflict and will likely require abandonment of any efforts to pre-balance student bodies by ethnicity.
Like really, not every educated black rose from ghetto.
These things take time to change and real progress didn't really get going until the 90's. Everyone wants instant change NOW but fails to realize things do take time.
The American elite wants to be seen as anti-racist, which means elevating at least some kids from the ghettos to the Ivy Leagues etc. At the same time, the American elite is still mostly white and does not want to jeopardize future of their own offspring, and many of those offspring are indeed average.
It seems to me that the current way to square those two interests is to raise tuition really high, combine it with legacy admissions (even an average kid of rich parents will be able to thread the needle there) and raise higher admission obstacles for Asians who would otherwise qualify in high numbers on knowledge alone.