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Notes -
The usual justification I hear is something you're brushing briefly against here: interest. What DEI proponents think is that the underrepresented minorities are not taking private music lessons for orchestral instruments because they don't feel welcome or invited in those fields. They feel it's a white or asian thing, not for them. Culturally, it's less of a thing they're likely to be introduced to.
So to steelman the DEI side here (which I must state I disagree with, but it still deserves steelmanning), minority enrollement in these activities requires bootstrapping; get a generation of these under-represented minorities in there or two by putting your thumb on the scale if necessary, hype the fuck out of them, and hopefully the next generation of the under-represented minority will be inspired by the DEI hires, will get on the pipeline early and the minority will not be under-represented anymore and you won't need to put your thumb on the scale.
I don't think it has ever worked, but I think that's the general idea.
*EDIT: To clarify why I don't think it ever works, is because it's extremely conceited. You have to assume that people are dumb and won't notice that your thumb is on the scale, and won't notice that the DEI hires are worse than the meritocratic ones. Which has a tendancy to backfire, if all the pro/famous under-represented minority athletes of a specific sport, or orchestral musicians are noticeably worse, it's likely to reinforce the idea that there is something innate with the group that makes them worse at that activity. Which would be worse than having only a few less-than-representative numbers but at least they perform to the same standard as others, which doesn't damage the "interest gap" potential explanation and won't discourage the people who do have the interest.
Sure, this is a sane position, whether or not it's true. But someone who believed this wouldn't (truthfully) say
Where, in context, the 'process' is a means of assessing applicants for a job, e.g. blind auditions to an orchestra. This argument admits that until the interest gap is closed, there will in fact be a skew in qualified applicants. It argues that you should hire the less meritorious applicants from certain groups anyway, but it doesn't claim that a test saying members of those groups are less meritorious is proof per se the test is biased. Which I agree with @WandererintheWilderness is something people sometimes say.
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