If you have evidence that people of colour were being overlooked for reasons of racism, then you'd be right. But if you're merely concerned about optics and giv

If you have evidence that people of colour were being overlooked for reasons of racism, then you'd be right. But if you're merely concerned about optics and giving special dispensation to hire for reasons other than qualifications, you're not expanding your talent pool, you're tarnishing all minorities in your company with the potential tag of being a diversity hire. Here's another reductio: Imagine if the NFL (that's American Football right?) started doing the exact same thing—requiring teams to work towards reflecting the demographics of their communities. There would cause outrage for obvious and correct reasons. And yet it's a direct parallel. To be clear, I agree with the principle of applying active introspection to how your hiring outcomes compare with demographics. This is a good thing. But I don't agree with the argument that private employers should be responsible for fixing (or more precisely, compensating for) problems which exist upstream of the hiring process. Because it doesn't fix the problem. In fact it can make it harder to fix the problem. It papers over the actual problems so that society has greater license to ignore them.