Of course, there are no examples of elite black-dominated universities abutting poor white technical colleges, so it's not possible to look for an anecdote in the opposite direction here.
There's plenty of historic and systemic racism that keeps black people poorer and less educated. That's where people's outrage should be focused.
Nobody has any trouble understanding that Duke is a higher-priority recruiting target than A&T.
Certainly the students should have been treated with much more respect. Multiple people clearly confused priority and respect. The two student bodies should have been treated with equal respect, but we can understand why they might not get equal priority. However, there's not enough evidence to rule out plain elitism for the lack of respect.
Besides, I do not really get why those dog&pony shows still exist in the first place.
You may have answered the question yourself. This is just a guess, but perhaps some employers see business value in those performances.
I don't think I really agree that visiting HBCUs is racist tokenism unless it is 100% just to get diversity brownie points and nothing else: it's still better than not visiting them entirely and to provide opportunities to underrepresented minorities for which, while the intent is to put them into the corporate grinder, having a high-paying tech job is still a material benefit.
Without seeing how they treated students at a similarly ranked non-HBCU, it's difficult to distinguish racism from colorblind elitism. It's probably a bit of both racism and elitism, but without a comparably ranked school for comparison, I wouldn't be comfortable using the word "definitely".
Ok. If you are going to agree that the situation is almost certainly the result of at least implicit racism, and the alternatives are pretty unlikely then cool. You agree.
This is exactly why you can't reasonably accept treating one group of people differently - it might be a lazy recruiter half-ass'ing their job, but it might also be actual real racism. There's no way to tell by looking. The outcome is the same.
If you're willing to give them a pass you might just be enabling a racist.
A. What you'll have to do will depend in how finely you divide your population. E.g. recent african immigrant vs. Slave descended are quite different demographics with different life trajectories and you'll be able to tell one from another very easily. There will be huge political fights over these categories.
B. If you do hire based on population demographics then two things will happen: You'll get a bit more inefficient workplace due to unperforming workers. But more importantly, you'll be surrounding people with a bunch of Xers (whichever the underperfoming demographics is. Hillbillies? African Americans? Republicans? Left handed folk?) who are underperforming. This will cause a strong association in their mind that X=less capable. Xism will then increase.
The influx of women to my workplace really didn't help my colleague's sexism.
You think your employer shouldn't aim to be increase the diversity of your team because that'd make you racist?
To provide special treatment is elitist at best, and racist and exploitative for PR points at worst.
And if the entire school doesn't pass the "hiring filter", stop going, and stop making false claims.
"Cisco, at least at a time did invest in A&T and NC State, far more so than UNC which it didn’t recruit from for a period."