Employers as a demographic are generally biased against minorities [citation needed] so we should legislate that they must be biased in the other direction.
Yup, nothing could possibly go wrong here.
Blue hell OW, repeat it with me: That's not what goddamn AA does. It's not about or intended to bias in the other direction (saying again, the anti-discrimination laws are still there!), it's meant to correct existent bias. It provides incentive/regulation to help (note: not mandate,
help) employers correct for likely bias, particularly of the racial sort.
As for citations, you're welcome to spend a few minutes googling the (many) various studies that have been done over the last few decades that have been regularly showing the problem by the numbers (one was mentioned upthread, even), or workforce/employment demographics that make it fairly obvious that shit may just be a bit off. We're really damn aware of some of the common cultural issues related to this stuff, at this point.
So we want equality of outcome, then, and not opportunity? Why don't we just get the government to put everyone into jobs where they'd be most suited and pay them all the same?
No? Equality of opportunity is the entire bloody point. Inequality of outcome is still perfectly fine, usually even under various AA-style programs, so long as steps are being made to make sure everyone's actually being given their fair shake.
hough to be fair, when are you going to encounter 200 equally-qualified candidates?
Equally qualified, but not identical? Uh. Regularly? Not sure if you've realized this, but the U.S., at least, is a place where you can end up with hundreds/thousands of applications for a friggin' waitress position in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, never mind something that is actually easily a accessible and paying worth a damn. There being dozens or hundreds of candidates in that pile that are roughly equally qualified is... not terribly unusual.