The justification for it is that minorities are still reeling from the effects of previous discriminatory policies, and AA used as a balancing force. Personally, I think if that's the issue, then we should use income based measures, not racially based ones.
Also, as someone else already pointed out, many racial groups are artificial. For example, there is a huge difference between a Filipino American and an international Chinese student, yet both are "Asian". There is also a huge difference between most Chinese Americans and Vietnamese Americans, who are mostly refugees from the Viet War. How can you classify all these diverse people with diverse backgrounds into one category? How does it help anything?
So yea, I agree some valuable resources are given to out undeservedly so, but only because we're using the wrong categories to measure who has been disadvantaged. I still agree with the spirit of AA, but not in its current form.
Well, the Jews were systematically discriminated against in college admissions with quotas, but I don't think affirmative action was a result of this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota
A few nit picks:
The population numbers for Asians, Blacks, and Latinos DO INDEED include far larger numbers of foreign students than the other numbers, as you were wondering. Not that it makes a difference to the point you were attempting to make. I'm just pointing out that the 'representation' numbers you gave imply that the Asian, Latino or Black populations at Harvard are composed exclusively of native born Americans, I wanted to make clear that they are not. Though I suppose anyone familiar with Harvard would find that to be obvious.
With that, I wanted to say that if wealthy, British educated, Africans are more qualified than African-Americans, then why should Harvard not admit them. Same with whites. If Jews are more qualified than non-Jewish whites, then they are the ones who deserve the spot at Harvard.
I realize that wealthy people get a pass, and while that is unseemly to me, I cannot claim to find it entirely unexpected.
All of this is coming from a Christian Midwesterner from the under-class and a farm state. So conservative that when I'm running the banks they won't pay any interest at all. But if we live in a meritocracy, then we live in a meritocracy. The fact of the matter is that if Harvard and other schools did not make 'allowances' there would be far fewer whites at Harvard than there are right now. I know that it's hard to hear, but there it is.
Even at second-tier schools, 'allowances' are made far too often. At the University of Wisconsin, they cut off foreign and out-of-state admissions so that less qualified Wisconsin residents can get some of the spots. As a conservative, I find this EXTREMELY distasteful.
The point (I hope) of affirmative action is that colleges understand that minorities are relatively disadvantaged at jumping through the right hoops (private school pedigree, solid extracurriculars, SAT prep classes, etc.), so the colleges try to compensate for that. Rich idiots get a leg up simply by virtue of their being rich and well-connected, which makes explicit legacy favoritism their second layer of advantage.
Your numbers support the increasingly popular (and very well-founded) idea that race-based affirmative action makes much less sense than that based on socioeconomic class.
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/002566.html?entry=2566
Let's drop the conspiracy theories about the evil "white" man.
Anyway. Rest assurred that all inefficiency has to be paid for. When a valuable resource is given to one group that doesn't deserve it (blacks/hispanics/whatever through affirmative action) it has to be paid for by another undeserving group, rich idiots, who reasonably expect an ROI.
And so Harvard segments the market, giving away some degrees for politics reasons, and giving away others for economic reasons.