Thank you for a very informative answer. Glad it felt good, hope it continues. I don't think pig-pen got to quant, but 55 years later, who can say?
I am a believer (bad word, but no other choices) in AA and I hate the anti-AA rhetoric. I still struggle when people who could have benefited from AA either by gender or race say they don't like it, but I won't pretend they don't say it, or there aren't problems. AFAIK its always the best candidate, its just AA re-defines what 'best' is in ways some other people don't like. The whole PC/SJW language is just shit: its labels to deny the underlying problem.
I am the other side of this problem, never faced the bias, never had to overcome it. I might even be part of the problem. Can't hire wisely if you don't know your own biases. That said, hiring women and minorities into my ICT space is just hard, and thats from a not-for-profit with 80 staff and more cultures than I can count. We still put women into finance and HR more than into tech and we still have next to no leadership outside the anglo core. The board is mixed. So there's that, I think it helps. (not in the USA btw)
Money is colourblind.. kinda. I do not believe this is completely true. I don't know any Koch brothers, or Walmart owners, or Peter Theil, and so I work in third hand knowledge. I do not believe they are colour or politics blind: their view of money is complicated. But I do believe you when you say that proven skills cut more with hiring in the money space, than in other spaces. Indian capital by definition is non-white and there are some standout Indian capital movers-and-shakers who own steel, coal, but who also live in a culture which badges people from birth "other" and that totally freaks me out. (there is one, Sanjeev Gupta, who I will put to one side. He might be capitalist, but he's no racist: he's accormittel and tata steel. he's big)
If you wind up in quant with money, ethical investment will be out there, in the future state, as something to talk about as a sub-set of investment to model. I get, that plays in tobacco and drugs and oil will include speculative gains as they crash and burn, or take off and persist. You would get to make choices in that too: Do you want to make $m on the strength of coal-tar sand mining, as KSA and others dump oil stocks to move to Solar? Or do you want to invest in battery tech to ride the up wave in Solar, but be tied into KSA legals? Do you even have to care? No, you don't. And I won't try to pretend you cannot, and won't say you should, even if I do say I would like you (and others) to care.
I read about black radio/tv entrepreneurs some time ago. People who could have been in the weather underground or panthers, but chose to invest in the system instead. I have also read that Clarence Thomas is not an AA backer, believes its better to prove you got there without the help. I don't respect Thomas for obvious reasons. He's pretty anti-social, never mind anti-socialist)