This is the case everywhere in the world. Then when X comes, the jury/hiring manager/... look at them, their skin color, sex, social provenance, name and, in th

This is the case everywhere in the world. Then when X comes, the jury/hiring manager/... look at them, their skin color, sex, social provenance, name and, in their minds, know that X is supposed to be given less or more weight. There is no need to have "race" in a form for this discrimination to work, it is as you said an informal message. Or a formal one, but then one has to play the game and add extra formal points to the applicant. If they do not play the game, we are back to the informal, subjective discrimination I mentioned at the beginning. EDIT: your link in a nice example of the craziness, indeed.