No one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes, and most of us are somewhere on the scale between great and crap. My partner and I joke about this concept of the mediocre white man, and how their workplace is dominated by these mediocre white men. Whereas if you're a woman, or if you're not white, you're not allowed to be mediocre. You gotta be great.
There are essentially two separate sets of measurements; one for white men and one for everyone else. And I notice this as a white man.
Discrimination has outsize effect on mediocre people. Exceptionally good people will always be able to get far and exceptionally incompetent are likely to be poor.
The discrimination usually shows in lots of small decisions that each separately is very difficult to call discrimation but together amount to making your life more difficult.
Mediocre people don't get many chances to get ahead and they can slip up sometimes. Discrimination makes those few occasions to get ahead much less likely and pay much less and the occasions when they slip up much more unforgiving.
E.g. government and many portions of academia.
People who don't support it leave, and people who are ambivalent adopt the attitudes of their remaining colleagues.
Yes, all these things might create entrenched groups, but make working viable in many occupations in the first place. I would take the groupthink in that case too.
If you're in a sector that isn't growing, or might even be shrinking, I imagine promotions are a lot more competitive...
Admittedly, 'reassignment' might not be the most precise term for this...
When you need to find that many trusted, competent managers that quickly, you can't afford reject people on the basis of their surname :)
But the lack of process and inexperience basically amplified the bias. There too much guess work going into decisions, so they were primary based on pattern matching like things. People were making decisions on very little information and in ambiguity, which made all the assumptions matter more. Where while bigger company I am in now, while there are people who openly express sexist opinions, in general I think I am getting more equal results.
Mostly because once they are making the decision, it is more likely to be based on my actual track record rather then feelings. Not that it is perfect, but when it is unfair, it unfair in all kind of various ways toward everyone and it seems more random. More likely based on personality conflict or something of that sort.
I've worked and consulted at a variety of companies. Of the ones that had an expectation that you do 1-2 year stints on teams, then rotate to different teams and challenges, I would describe ~100% as having a healthy workplace political culture.
Of the ones that did not have that expectation, and people typically stayed on a single team for 2 years+, I would describe ~25% as having a healthy workplace political culture.
My conclusion is that, more-so than anything else, cultivating and encouraging regular internal transfers produces healthier companies. (And that's not even broaching the documentation and repeatability benefits!)
It seems counter-intuitive, and I never would have guessed if I hadn't seen it again and again...
I'm not even low-caste but still faced these issues.
My dad worked for the government for 30 years and he was not promoted even once until this year. this is not because he was not good at his work, the work is actually pretty simple and stupid, but because of affirmative action policies of all governments current and past, left or right.