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Notes -
It does make it harder to have merit anywhere, though. At least in the US, due to the "disparate impact" standard, it's hard to use any sort of test to measure aptitude without getting sued, which hurts organizations hire qualified people in general. Like, tests being fine but with different standards for different races would be better than the current status, as at least you'd get the more competent people within each group, but that's illegal.
It's also pretty plainly clear to me that everyone wants more of the favored minorities in their organizations, and this obviously has a tradeoff.
Look no farther than what happened at universities before the SCOTUS case last year (and presumably still happens in many places under the radar), for extremely obvious cases of less qualified people academically being chosen. And SATs are pretty predictive of scholastic achievement.
On the other hand, I see no reason to think that people are promoting incompetent or less competent white people at above average rates? Rather the opposite, given the current incentives?
Your "bad form" and "diversity in background" takes are reasonable, but I at least would have some caution in practice for the latter. Diversity is for some reason nearly always taken to mean diversity along the various groups that the left cares about, and not, e.g. religious diversity, even though I would think that different ideological commitments would do more towards seeing things in complimentary lights than different ethnicities.
At the very least, we should stop legally mandating racial preferences in hiring, and let capitalism do its work of directing resources towards those who do a better job, without interference.
I'll end by pointing out that if you do genuninely think that there's currently a non-innate IQ gap, that probably should still affect who you want to employ—jobs that require more intelligence should end up hiring different racial groups at different rates.
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