To a first approximation, "zero" is the number of firms that believe they should hire "based off skin colour and not skill". Such a hyperbolic characterization over diversity concerns can't possibly generate a useful conversation.

Even with equal skills, minorities are still discriminated against:

http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

>The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews.

It's a shame that study appears to have been comparing "weird" black names like Lakisha with "normal" white names like Greg. I'd be interested to see a study that uses "weird" white names like Track or Jairyd or Zaiden for comparison, because I suspect those would also suffer compared to Greg. (Even if an anti-"weird" name bias is all that's at work, this would still probably disproportionately affect black people, unfortunately. I'm just wondering about the causation.)

While I have probably faced what I would consider to be very minor discrimination, I would say that if you're good at what you do people will accept you and you can succeed.

I mention it in another comment, but the pressure I faced to stay in the culture I was brought up in was much more of a deterrent to success than any headwinds I faced in the professional world for being "different".

Because "skill" is not a well defined measure, and it often ends up meaning "people similar to me" in practise?