Are you trolling now?

People tend to substitute their biases when evaluating skills and knowledge. Some people overcome these biases through practice but everyone has them.

It's 2023, this is not new territory.

Thinking of it in terms of race might indicate more about how you view things. As an example, think about how frequently throughout history people in power have claimed that women "can't handle" the positions of power that men had. They cite all kinds of nonsense like "emotional" or "hysterical"... conveniently ignoring all of the hysterical and emotional men throughout history.

Think about how something like that would affect how companies are formed. Things seem much better now, but I merely wanted to highlight one of many kinds of biases that are actively affecting our society, even if they are hard to qualify.

Inclusive hiring practices, in my experience, strive to have a diverse funnel whereby under-represented groups get to be in consideration, but you still hire the best out of the pool. It may take longer to fill that pool, but many agree that it is worth it.

It would be sad to me to cede the concepts of bias and inclusion to only referring to one dimension.