Discrimination per se isn’t necessarily a problem. You’re discriminating on some basis no matter how you hire someone. A lot rides on the motivation for discrimination.
As Martin Luther King said:
> History unfortunately leaves some people oppressed and some people oppressors.
It’s just a fact that some groups end up with advantages in any society and some end up disadvantaged, and those that have advantages will use their power and wealth to retain them.
You don’t have to lay blame on people to see that it happens, and how it can be damaging to society if allowed to continue to its natural end— massive political and economic inequality.
So how do you fix it? If you go on a purely quote-unquote merit based system, the people who grew up with educated, wealthy parents, in safe neighborhoods, etc, will naturally fill the educational and recruitment pipelines that train people for high status jobs.
And thus you perpetuate injustice and unfairness from generation to generation, which even if you don’t object to morally, you should at least object to out of self interest, because it will leas to instability and civic unrest.
Racial quotas in hiring are a blunt instrument to be sure, and can be grossly unfair to individuals, particularly the less well off members of advantaged groups who get passed over.
I don’t know if I think they’re a good way to solve the problem over a purely class based approach, but if you look at it and all you see is ‘racism’, then I would suggest that you look a little bit deeper, because it’s a much more complex issue than that.