Basically they do it by focusing on promoting diversity, but keeping the meaning of that word so nebulous it doesn't violate any laws. As a UC grad student, I'm not familiar with undergraduate admissions, but I assume they're handled similarly to selection criteria in other cases.In graduate admissions, faculty hiring and various fellowships, such as the President Dissertation and Posdoc fellowships, they essentially highlight promoting diversity as either a factor that is considered, or in the case of the President fellowships the main evaluation criteria. In any document the UC is clear to say that applicants are considered regardless of race, gender, etc. as a legal necessity.So, while most people take it for granted that the President fellowships are only given to minorities, the application and evaluation criteria are framed in such a way that it is not explicitly stated. So, as a white man, the faculty in my department just took it for granted that I wouldn't apply for the President fellowship, and anyone discussing the fellowship - students and faculty alike - implicitly or explicitly assumed it would go to a minority student.When it comes to faculty hires, it is wrong to assume that just because a call for applications says they encourage minority applicants, minority applicants have a better chance of being hired. The extent to which that is true probably varies widely between disciplines and individual departments, and there are some disciplines that are notoriously hostile to minorities and/or women (e.g. philosophy). I sincerely doubt that anyone gets hired purely based on a commitment to diversity, but I'm fairly confident that's counted against people in hiring decisions. Overall there aren't any It is impossible to know how much being a minority is an advantage or disadvantage overall, because nobody in a hiring committee is going to explicitly say they don't want someone hired because of their race, and committee discussions aren't public anyway.