>She says a lot of businesses stumbled in recent years by publicizing demographic targets. Intended to keep companies accountable to the numbers, the goals were easily misconstrued as reverse discrimination.<p>That isn't a misconstrual - except for the part where the term "reverse discrimination" is an invention of activists to mock their critics, not generally used by their critics unless they don't know any better. <i>It's just discrimination</i>. And if you are targeting a demographic ratio, rather than letting your applicants come in as they may and judging them fairly, you are <i>definitionally</i> discriminating.<p>And it is, or at least should be, more than just "legally risky" - if the law, and its underlying moral principle, were taken seriously rather than the legal system being swayed by the same specious arguments.<p>>“By the time the message trickles down, it’s heard as, ‘They won’t hire a white guy,’” she says.<p>We have "white guys" telling us they've been told this, in about as many words, e.g. the story told by Shaun Maguire of Sequoia Capital about his Google experience:<p><a href="https://x.com/shaunmmaguire/status/1736082530573422762" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/shaunmmaguire/status/1736082530573422762</a><p><a href="https://x.com/shaunmmaguire/status/1760872265892458792" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/shaunmmaguire/status/1760872265892458792</a><p><a href="https://x.com/shaunmmaguire/status/1760885099984261564" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/shaunmmaguire/status/1760885099984261564</a>