Break down a hypothetical scenario:
1. Post a job, anyone can apply.
2. Candidate applies, goes through the hiring process, the team likes them and wants to make an offer.
3. Not a woman or PoC so not allowed to make an offer yet.
So at this point lets say you go out and interview a woman or PoC.
a. If you like the woman or PoC and want to give them the job, then the first person was discriminated against because if they had been a different race or gender they would have got the job.
b. If you don't give them the job then you can check the box saying you interviewed the diverse candidate, but this is at best purely performative because the other outcome was discriminating against the first person.
Logically, it is impossible to have this policy and not be breaking both the spirit and letter law in my opinion.
Also the implication of "diverse managers hire diverse teams" is that the diverse managers will discriminate based on race and gender.
Edit: To some degree it's a variation of the same old goals/metrics spiel. Ideally you'd have managers who want to give URMs a chance. In practice creating this metric to force it makes nothing better but likely everything worse for everyone in the system.
This is a nice way of saying that we are breaking the law.
underrepresented minority
(Not from USA so I don't know many diversity acronyms)
Look at the published diversity data on the Apple website, the company is now 50% Asian in North America (they stopped publishing the data after 2022 but internally that’s the number now), because it’s cheaper to hire H1B’s and they can’t leave the company.
It’s not surprising that Americans are having trouble finding jobs right now, they are being squeezed by both DEI and cheap labor from abroad.