Most eye opening experience in my personal development was attending HR conferences (we sold an HR …

It wasn’t even coded in many cases. I’ve had pitch meetings where I had to explain how I was brown as part of an express consideration of the business decision. White people talked about my race to my face more in 2020-2021 than during seven years in the south starting right after 9/11. Some “DEI” was high level measures like recruiting at a broader set of universities. But in the last 5 years it routinely got down to discussing the race of specific individuals in the context of whether to hire them or enter into business relationships.

It's funny how everyone brings up all these anecdotes, but then the reality is that there are plenty of studies that show that if your name is associated with being black you have much lower chances to be invited to an interview. So seems like all this talk by HR people didn't really change any hiring practices. It's also funny how everyone is outraged by the DEI programs, instead of the real discrimination that is happening in hiring.