[rotw]

> If you are taking diversity into account, you are taking things other than merit into account and so it isn't a 'true' meritocracy.

Well, no. The point is that due to inherent unconscious biases (see my link for scientific papers documenting this), it's impossible to only take merit into account without social norms biased towards white men skewing the process. Diversity initiatives seek to eradicate this bias, in order to truly measure merit and compensate for the interfering factors.

> Not only that but it also suffers from the no true Scotsman fallacy.

I really don't see what that's got to do with anything here.

> To avoid unconscious bias, you would have to hire someone without knowing their age, sex, sexual orientation or anything else that you could consider discriminatory. That would mean hiring someone that you haven't and that's a little extreme.

Presumably you mean "you haven't met"? Well exactly. Hence, diversity initiatives that seek to compensate in practical ways.

[jcromartie]

How about a "blind" hiring process? For software engineers, it's easy to imagine tools that could help evaluate skills without revealing that person's race or gender.