You can’t fight racism and sexism by using “reparative” racism and sexism. Going after straight white men because of their identity is as abhorrent as any other form of racism/sexism.
Racism does bad things. So then we try and fix the negative effects of racism. We practice a new form of "good racism." But it's still racism. And all it does is create more racism, despite our good intentions to roll back the negative effects of racism.
We do the same with sexism. And agism. And any other form of differentiationism.
And those that benefit not from one state or the other, but rather the flux of transitioning from one state to the other, flock to, and encourage the correctionism.
It's like fighting fire with flood rains, and not recognizing the difference between a forest-fire and camp-fire.
As a trans woman I think I have a unique perspective here, having literally seen both sides of this issue. I would have agreed with you at one point in my life, but I see things differently now.
It kind of bothers me to see straight cis white men get all worked up about things like this. You think this is unfair? You have absolutely no concept of what it's like to be a marginalized minority. They've had so much handed to them their whole lives, yet the second they have to deal with the kind of thing that minorities have to deal with they make a big fuss.
The world is unfair, deal with. We all have to every damn day and no one listens to us when we cry about it.
Also, grouping "cis" in with all that is nonsense. Esp trans women, who seem to think they don't have all the benefits of being male. (Because biology is, in fact, real)
The perversion here is the assumption that the next minority you hire is a complete stand-in for the implicitly-assumed minority who missed out before, leading to the existing imbalance.
You can’t fix sexism with just a hiring policy but you can absolutely fix the effect of your company having no diversity with one.
I’ve heard people argue that such action provides a spark for further change. Like brings a new perspective to a group that cascades into more positive effects.
It comes to mind the idea of “black children needing black superhero role models” or similarly for girls or other groups. I wonder to what extent this merely reinforces a racist ideology. Why can’t the role model be of any colour?
How deep is it, truly, that the tribal behaviour based on group similarities, are ingrained in humans.
Interestingly, amongst the well educated, or the wealthy, a different selection criteria is established.
It's still reasonable to wonder why the vast majority of role models are white men, and think about redressing that a bit. The problem is we sometimes get dreck like the Batwoman TV show or Captain Marvel where diversity became a creative shackle; but then we also can get the Wonder Woman* and Black Panther movies where diversity was realised as a creative opportunity. The important thing is to maintain artistic integrity.
* And yes I'm aware of the irony given the origins of the character.
Because that's just not how it works. You're assuming that the important thing is the role model's race, gender, sexuality. It's about having a character that is like you. How they look is just one small part of it. If you have a movie script where the main character is a white suburbanite man and once it's fully written make his skin color black it doesn't suddenly become good representation.
So I don't buy "this is not how it works".
You are right. We cannot fight racism and sexism with more racism and sexism.