Life by itself is not valuable. Bacteria are alive -- that doesn't stop me from washing my hands before I eat.

...and this line of thought applies to *most* colleges, and most of the colleges getting shafted in the funding process aren't historically black. There are just a lot of colleges out there (mostly crappy), of all colors.

The institution of a grant applicant matters a *lot* (probably more than the scientific merit of the grant application itself or the applicant writing it). The vast majority of funding goes to the largest, most famous, and (in a somewhat circular manner) most successful research universities. Due to this skewing, if that small pool of top-ranked schools have relatively few black faculty, then the funding will end up going to faculty who aren't black.

From my experience in academia, this seems like a "pirates prevent global warming" situation -- there may be a correlation, but probably not a causative one. There is *definitely* bias in how grants are awarded, but it's bias toward specific institutions rather than a racial bias (given that color is hard or impossible to infer from grant application paperwork anyway).