[a30b40]

This is just what OP is experiencing with extra steps. Here's why:

1. Find merit based, good, but (unfortunately) majority candidate. 2. Position is held open, the meritorious engineer is waiting for an offer. 3. A few minority position trickle in that are nearly as good but not quite. 4. DEI argues you should choose the minority and uses an excuse like "they're trainable" to justify racist hiring practices.

In both these systems you really only wanted to use racist recruiting practices to hire non-white non-males. But to get around the legal concern step (4) gives you plausible deniability.

It is no surprise that your average person thinks these hiring practices are racist and they lead to tokenization of the very group you're trying to protect. Consequently all the "hidden bias" DEI bleets on about is brought on by them. Things like "they were only hired/promoted because they fit in X category" where X is something innate and uncontrollable. It is not "racist" to look at a minority coworker differently if you know for the fact they weren't hired on merit. No different than the CEO's son getting a promotion to VP. Both people are undeserving.

I am in the "majority" and have been passed up on promotions and probably not hired in several jobs because of things like this. Thanks to step (4) it is difficult to sue, but it would bring me great pleasure to take a company to court because of this.

DEI should be renamed DIE to reflect it's true nature at a company. The extremist, racist, wing of HR.

[virtue3]

It's not racism it's prejudice.

"According to the sociological perspective, members of privileged groups can experience prejudice, but their experience will be different than the experience of someone who experiences systemic racism."

One could argue that being in the majority you would have an easier time getting a lateral promotion than someone as a minority.

[jjoonathan]

    rac·ism
    /ˈrāˌsizəm/
    noun
    prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people 
    on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, 
    typically one that is a minority or marginalized.

[zozbot234]

Racism is literally defined as prejudice + discrimination + unequal power relationship. It's quite undeniable that a majority-race person who gets rejected solely because of DIE practices in a bureaucratic hiring process is experiencing all three - in particular, she is in an unequal power relationship with the people who are deciding whether or not to hire her.

[drdeca]

Just another attempt to exert power over others by (an attempt at) imposing a definition used by one group, on the rest of society.

The common understanding of the term is not “incorrect”.

[blululu]

This is one of those ‘well actually’ type of statements that assumes that there is a single correct definition of a concept and it is defined by a consortium of researchers 5 years ago. The the term already had common definition and widespread use for 50 years. Saying people don’t know what the concept means because they were taught a different definition since the age of 6 is not going to move the discussion forward.

[dude187]

Racism is a much more apt word for it than prejudice

[Zababa]

Systemic racism is one form of racism, but not the only one. Just because you don't experience systemic racism doesn't mean that you don't experience racism at all.

I would say that only hiring non-white people would be prejudice if and only if you consider that only hiring white people is prejudice and not racism too.