[blindmute]

No, it's not okay. Unfortunately it is normal. I have been in charge of hiring decisions in the past and was explicitly told to "prefer women and minorities". Because of this, I felt it was my duty to discriminate against women and minorities, to at least balance out the decision-making somewhat (I was not the sole hiring decider).

I would prefer not to discriminate at all. But in the current climate, to anyone with power reading this, giving preference to white men is ironically the right thing to do. I hope things change soon to where I and others don't need to do this.

> I'm concerned that at some point I will inevitably have to either challenge something, and be labelled a bigot or misogynist, or live an increasingly bizarre existence with things happening around me that I consider to be clearly wrong.

This is a hard issue. I have chosen to accept the 'bigot' label if it comes (no one has called me that irl yet). My skills are highly in demand, and I don't care at all if I get fired; I can have another job in a week. If you're not in this fortunate position, I can't say what you should do. But I do believe that once you've "made it" and you can afford to do and say what is right, you have the duty to do so no matter what people will say.

[noitpmeder]

I feel this is almost entirely the wrong way to go about this.

"Balancing the scale", e.g. applying targeted discrimination as an attempt to offset other perceived discrimination, is how we got into this mess!!

Pick the best person for the role, regardless of race/color/creed/sex/... and advocate your peers do the same. This is the only correct answer here.

[blindmute]

It's not to offset perceived discrimination, but explicitly stated discrimination policy. When you can't change the policy, you can at least do the right thing and try to go against it. When two people are equally qualified I will advocate for the white male, because I know that the others won't. If I simply say "They are both equally qualified" then the white male will never be hired, and this is wrong.

It is unfortunate that their decisions require me to make this decision, but ethically and game theoretically it is correct. If the policy was meritorious then this would be unnecessary.

[sharemywin]

You're not really correcting a wrong. You basically propagating the exact same logic they are. using racism/sexism to fight racism/sexism.

[alphabettsy]

Giving preference to white men is the right thing to do because they’re being excluded from the workforce?