You should not know and should not take it in consideration but in the USA this is part of the application. I understand the whole point is to make sure diverse candidate are not discriminated against (and of course that would be a ridiculous thing to do), but it seems to have been perverted into caricaturical discrimination _for_, even favoring a diverse incompetent candidate over a non-diverse competent one.

Then how do you suppose we ended up with fields where nearly everyone was a white male, if race was never taken into consideration?

That's a crazy claim told without any proof. I don't see any studies, sources linked in your comment. That just sounds like your own anecdotal perspective.