Having been on the (explicit) receiving side of this - you just don’t fill the other positions until you find the right candidates (where right is whatever criteria you can’t say out loud - though has been said out load often in the last few years).

Alternatively, this is a way for your boss to meet budget targets while not explicitly laying people off, and giving hope to people that help is coming.

Advertising your jobs to more people (including black ones) might help you find more candidates. If you're not finding enough candidates AND you're only finding white candidates, something is wrong, innit? There are all those people who aren't white who might be candidates who for some reason you're ignoring.

How long do you go before you call it quits, and how many white candidates do you need to pass over before you find ‘enough’ black candidates? What consequences need to happen with all those unfilled roles before it is ‘enough’?

Especially since the market of people willing to work the job AND take the pay AND work in the area is not infinite.

We’re talking about a group which went out of its way (apparently) already to recruit folks with the specific colors they wanted + these other criteria.

Don’t forget, everyone else in the country has been having similar constraints and has been trying to do the same thing near as I can tell.

Why do you think they were sharing test answers (it seems), and still only got x candidates in?

And also, doesn’t this entire thing seem actively unfair and racist (albeit to everyone except the chosen minority) instead of what at worst was perhaps a passively unfair and racist situation before? (Albeit to everyone except the majority)

How is that actually any better, except that it pisses off the majority instead of the minority?

Seems like a good way to lose elections, frankly. Or have a majority of the population angry at every minority out there.

Why pass over any white candidates?

You have more spots than you have qualified candidates. Even if you take your second band candidates, its still short the number you need.

Because if your hiring numbers (and workforce composition) don’t line up with what the gov’t expects (applies even more to the gov’t itself) then as a hiring manager you’re in deep shit.

Straight from the president up until Trump (for many administrations), affirmative action is required.

And what the gov’t expects is that your workforce composition aligns with the population as a whole, percentage wise.

Again that doesnt make sense.

You have 100 open positions.

You filled 50.

You left the other 50 spots open so that you could have the right composition amongst HALF of the required workforce?

Heck, if you hire everyone, you solve this problem completely.