These jobs are more prevalent and easier to snag than you think. I lived in Beijing when I was 21 and after 2 months and with the Chinese proficiency of a 2 year-old, I was working directly with the president of what is now a publicly-traded (NASDAQ) company as a "consultant". Paid my rent for a year.
A Malaysian coworker of mine told me about this sort of phenomenon years ago. (Something like 2002?) He was working for Compaq in the Asia-Pacific region, and noted that his group would often send in someone with asian features someplace with a proposal, which would get rejected. They'd later send a white American to give the same presentation, and it would win.
In Providence Rhode Island, the city paper submitted dozens of résumé pairs to jobs, differing only by obviously-classed name (like William Strathmore vs Tyrone Jackson), no cover letters. The Tyrone Jackson ones got no calls back, whereas the Thomas Strathmore ones got about a 50% callback rate.