Fortune 500 companies are regulated for minorities federally going back decades.
Africans are needed in managment to meet mandatory minority percentages and in many cases, ones are promoted that do not even come close to being capable of the requirements of the position. It is all about timing and needing an African at a certain level of management at a certain time.
There was an African controller for a division who some of his own African employess joked that he "couldn't even count".
Also, God help us, Africans are getting into Med school (& law school and others) despite not being qualified, and getting scholarships, too...passing over others that clearly are qualified in all the needed categories.
Yes, this happened to me, I was up for promotion years ago and was bypassed as they needed to have a black in the management position since they did not have any. This came down from upper management, all of my managers apologized profusely to me behind closed doors and promised I would get the next
one. Most of the co-workers were unhappy I did not get the position, all races I worked with all said I should have got it.
The person who did get the position was someone I was very friendly with and he apologized to me as he thought I was deserving and should have gotten the job, not him.
Funny part was due to this happening all of my bosses bent over backwards to make it up to me. I had no problems getting time off, got some performance bonuses above and beyond what I was allowed, etc. Also the person who got the position was someone I worked with all the time and he was now my boss.
He was a very nice guy, hard worker with kids so I was ok with him getting it as he needed it more than me. So when he took over being my boss, he was not the sharpest guy so I did some of his work trying to show him how to do the job he was promoted to. After a few months he got better but he also leaned on me to help him when we worked together, which I was ok with as he did not do anything to me. We actually got along great.
I started looking around for another job at a higher position, after networking a few months I got one and left.
They tried to keep me but I was done with being there and never looked back