DDG-37 My personal opinion is that hiring based on skin color is just wrong. So I'm with you there. It also puts an unfair onus on the hired, who have to prove that they were the best candidate for the job, apart from skin color, all over again to their fellow pilots after they have been hired.
United were saying that they have too many white males, and to remedy this, they are proposing to provide a route for minority, and female pilots into the profession with them.
A non industry related source:
There are all sorts of reasons why the best pilot for the job may not get hired, none of them good. I'm clearly not in the industry, but I suspect that if as a White male, you challenged a decision not to hire you, on the basis that the airline was trying to get a more balanced workforce, getting evidence would be difficult, and your name might be shared, in a way that names were possibly not shared in the Atlas incident.