Honestly this sounds apocryphal.
What is the type of racist that accidentally doesn't promote any black people? Furthermore, what is the subset of those racists that simply stop once they get lectured about their obviously racist practices? If they're promoting the wrong people (ie the ones that don't do the job the best) they get fired.
That said, the anti-racism training classes actually make that sort of racism worse: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/opinion/dei-trainings-eff...
There could be barriers like credentials that some groups may have at a lower rate. A hiring manager sees one candidate with a college degree and another without, and chooses the one with, because that is what is “best”.
Have you not heard the term "implicit bias"?
> Furthermore, what is the subset of those racists that simply stop once they get lectured about their obviously racist practices?
The ones operating in a high-turnover field trying to retain their threadbare staff. Part of it was also that there had been some new additions to the management team, and part of it was the national conversation around racism that just made people more aware of it and provided the conceptual framework to understand what was happening.
> If they're promoting the wrong people (ie the ones that don't do the job the best) they get fired.
I can't come up with a polite way to tell you how naive this is.