Is meritocracy overrated?

It is important in the case at hand because the people who are dominating in the race neutral steps B and C are not white. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the seats they are taking are at the expense of whites

Sure, with respect to the descendants of slaves and american indians but the beneficiaries of the policy that mayor deblasio is pushing in nyc are not typically the descendants of slaves or american indians. They are largely hispanics and immigrant blacks. Why should we push aside poor asian immigrants that earned their spot to make room for a group that is mostly hispanics and black immigrants?

Why does the burden of this historical injustice seem to fall so frequently on the backs of poor asians? Why is it that these movements for racial balancing seem to have no political traction until whites are a minority in these institutions and the burden of this balancing will be overwhelmingly borne by non-whites (specifically asians)? is there really no way to place the majority of this historical burden on white people?

I think there is. Government sponsored reparations funded by wealth taxes. White people still have the overwhelming majority of wealth in this country, sure blacks, hispanics, asians and native americans sometimes have a lot of wealth too but this seems like a much more equitable way of distributing the burden than making room for black and hispanic, kids at the expense of asian kids.