I agree with your assessment about how minority hires happen in practice. There are a lot of frictions, aside from pressure for social justice over profits. Th

I agree with your assessment about how minority hires happen in practice. There are a lot of frictions, aside from pressure for social justice over profits. There are a lot of qualified minorities, but they're rarely hired into these roles. In most cases, boards have no way to identify qualified people from groups that don't behave like them. In many cases, the hired minority is either: - an unqualified token member (there are people who serve on swarms of unrelated boards, since they're in the network and literally the only minority people know); or - a person who might have a certain skin color, but is culturally a WASP, and has no insights into those communities. I don't think marketing partnerships are at all helpful relative to having actual people from communities in the business. Cultural assumptions permeate every business decisions, and serving markets effectively can't be retrofitted. US companies often crash-and-burn with this approach (see all the failed entries especially into China, but more broadly as well).