You ever read
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks ? It doesn't matter what social structure is ideal. Sure, we all want a culture where everyone from any race trusts anyone else from another race. The reality is that there is a pretty big "trust gap" between different races in this country, and they all have different reasons for mistrusting other races. The problem is way more complex than it might seem at the surface. Older, poorer African-Americans still have bad flashbacks about unauthorized and ethically dubious medical experiments. Latinos often want physicians that can speak Spanish. No, you taking three years of Spanish in high school and then two semesters in undergrad does not
necessarily qualify as speaking spanish.
"BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL THE RICH SECOND GENERATION LATINOS THAT DONT KNOW SPANISH THEY ARE STILL GETTING--"
Shut up.
LizzyM has already established that URMs are viewed in the context of their upbringing and what they can bring to the table.
Finally, about the Jewish quotas. This isn't like the Jewish quotas. Inb4 "but omg there is a clear stagnant percentage of asian students at these institutions, it's totally a quota" argument. Here's why it's not like the Jewish quotas:
The Jewish quotas were secretly enforced by prestigious undergraduate institutions in the midst of an incredibly anti-semitic American culture that preceded the creation of the Jewish state and before the tragedy of the Holocaust that brought the conversation about deliberate Jewish persecution to the national dialogue. In spite of this, Jewish applicants were disproportionately wealthier and more qualified then the rest of the applicant pool and thus seemed to receive a disproportionate number of seats at these institutions; consequently, this might, at first, seem a lot like what's going on now. The difference is that the institutions saw the Jewish population as a tarnish on their shiny, ivy-coiled name. This is not the case with the Asian population.
Here's what this is:
Medical schools serve a purpose. The burden is on the applicant to show how they can best fit this purpose in some mutually beneficial way, not on the medical school to provide a reward for meritocratic success.
In my opinion, applicants should approach undergrad and grad school applications like one would approach getting a job or an internship. When they ask you "Why should we accept you?" you should hear "Why do you want to work for us? Why do you want to represent us?" The answer shouldn't be "I'm really smart, look at these numbers, I love you and I've always wanted to be a doctor." The answer should be "You have this mission, I believe in this mission, I can bring this to the table: life experience, experiences working with the disadvantaged, other languages, experience taking care of people in old age, with special needs. From you I would like medical training perhaps with a focus in X or Y and grounded in a philosophy of Z that matches up with your mission statement."
Admissions are more like relationships than transactions. Of course, it's difficult to maintain this perspective when they become so expensive that students more often feel like "customers" of an institution rather than partners and representatives in its employ. Just like you can't expect a girl to go out with you just because you're nice and did all the right things - hold the door open, buy flowers, score a 45 on your ROMCAT - you can't expect a medical school to accept you just because your stats, while exponentially better than other applicants, are functionally logarithmically better at accomplishing a mission.