If an applicant is being thrown out on the sole attribute of their race and gender, then those individuals are being reduced down to only two bits of information. One can not look only on those not being discriminating. It would be as silly as saying that no university was selecting random people from the street matching the male gender in the 19th century.
The phrase I am borrowing is from Carl Sagan, where he is using the even less charitable argument that discrimination is simply lazy thinking. Instead of evaluating an individual as a full person we reduce them down to single bit of information like gender and race. It is what people do when they are unwilling to do the thinking needed to actually see a person. The result is nothing less than evil, historically and present.
You might not care about culture, but those being hired usually do. A culture of discrimination is a culture of distrust. On HN we see with a fairly common regularity articles where once being happy to have joined a company under those circumstances, the diversity hire find themselves very unhappy and leaves. The experience can so bad that people quit the profession itself, or determine that the only functional work culture is a mono-culture and joins a company with only their gender or race.
Last, I have a rather strong warning against trying to solve the ills of the past with ills of the present. It is less than a century ago that a country in Europe decided to go after a demographic that held a historical strong position in mercantile and banking. Resenting a demographic based on what their grand and grandgrand, and grandgrandgrand parents did is a very dark place to be.
> Nothing has worked
We do know what works, it just people are unwilling to do it. The way to address class differences between demographic is to raise the social support. Gender segregation is effectively reduced through support programs like mentorships, which raises understanding and cooperation. It is hard work. What does not work in both cases is more discrimination.