Specifically, equity explicitly entails redistributing resources based on lack of privilege. This is instead of equality, which entails providing everyone with the same resources and opportunity.
Now we are left with question of how to fairly distribute resources. These are centralized decisions made by career bureaucrats. If the distinction was made along economic lines, this would not be all that political. However, lines are commonly drawn along race, gender, and sexual orientation. Now those making these decisions have decide based on belief structures about what groups are the least privilege. These structures are inherently political and a poor proxy for economic status.
https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversit...
Which speaks for itself.
Usually the question does not explicitly call out race or gender, but the grading rubric definitely dings the candidate if TC doesn't reference them in their answer or says anything about political, economic, or regional diversity instead.
The one saving grace of this system is that no one expects any meaningful hiring signal to come out of these interviews unless TC is a total idiot when answering the questions.
Both put a huge emphasis on extracurricular activities which needed to be focused on social justice areas. Both were petrified they didn't have enough activities to get accepted.
In the end, they got accepted to where they wanted to go, but the shift to tow the line for social justice, inclusion and other hot topics of the day has been surprising to me. When I applied in the early aughts, the only thing my classmates were worried about were our SAT/ACT scores. Nobody cared at that point about your political leanings. Seems like today that is a greater focus than ever before.