Anecdotally, someone whom I went to school with was whip-smart, and yet completely discounted by the school because of their race. Fast-forward 20 years later, went to med school and is an excellent doctor.
But I could have easily seen things turning out differently if they’d remained in the same school. Point being, school authorities do disregard talent for racial reasons, and this should be accounted for to keep talent from going to waste.
That is an anecdote, not a fact.
If you are a woman or a minority today, educational institutions and industry bend over backwards to provide opportunities (financial and otherwise) that are not available to equally qualified people who might be white, male, or both.
This has been going on for decades, yet it is continually trumpeted that women are underrepresented in the STEM fields.
This is not a shot a women (as an example). Women have nothing holding them back intellectually, yet they still don’t enter those fields in the same numbers as men, despite thousands of programs, grants, organizations, and efforts to address this ‘problem’.
Why do you think that is?