At the risk of sounding like the party line, if you're under-recruiting in significant portions of society, you are unlikely to be getting the best people to fill the slots you've got. I think targetted advertising/recruitment pushes are perfectly reasonable...
I think it is unreasonable to push for certain target numbers, there is nothing wrong with advertising campaigns and recruitment drives for certain people but only as part of an overall drive for a certain number of people full stop.
How you make up that number is irrelevant, if you have advertised the jobs and only a tiny percentage of ethnic minorities take up the offers then so be it! to say that for eg twenty per cent should be from ethnic minorities is a joke, all that you end up doing is prejudicing against none ethnics to help you make your stats and appear to be multi cultural.
The met police have been given a very high figure of ethnicity to be attained by 2012 and already their is evidence of positive discrimination to help achieve this, perfectly good white candidates have been overlooked so that the stats will be met!!!!
And what happens, you get certain ethnic types asking to be removed from certain duties cos they don't agree with them! I am all for ethnic minorities doing any job in society as long as they have been recruited fairly and equally alongside their counterparts irrespective of race, and whilst I fully respect their cultures and different religions they too must respect ours, if they don't think they can fullfill their role due to their religion or beliefs then they shouldn't do the job full stop, nobody should be able to ask for special treatment due to their religion or culture if you want the job you do it in our country by our rules.