Not saying it IS. But the idea that people are getting is that to be equal, we have to have an equal split of minorities. We have to have a black president to show that we're not racist, we have to have a female prime minister to show we're not racist.
No, we need to prove that black presidents and female prime ministers are possible, and are as likely as they should be given their proportion within the population. If 20% of a population is black, then in a society without racism, so should 20% of the presidents, CEOs, dock workers, and homeless.
I didn't vote for Barack Obama because he's black, nor do I think he lived a life without privilege, nor does any of that affect what I think of his ability. I'm
still glad we've had a black president now, because it's proof of how far we've come. Also, the more milestones like that a minority (or gender) can cross, the more it helps break down misconceptions regarding them.
What we should be doing is not just enforcing an equal spread. We should be enforcing equal opportunities, such that when the market hires based on talent, we get less of a purely white anglo saxon protestant group.
I hate to say this, but equal opportunity does not mean "free market", just in case anyone gets that idea. People have this notion that "equal opportunity" means "let everybody do what they want and don't interfere"; that doesn't work, because people are
born into various levels of privilege. If you're born poor, speaking the wrong dialect of English, etc., you
will not have opportunities equal to a rich white person who grew up in a nice town with a nice school and parents who push him to do all the "proper" things to get ahead in life. Even simply hiring based on talent only works to eliminate racial/socioeconomic barriers when people of different races and socioeconomic strata have access to the same opportunities in the first place, which in the real world is virtually never the case.
This isn't necessarily an argument against what you're saying, since I'm not sure how much of this you already agree with, but it's a common enough mode of thought that I figured it's worth mentioning regardless.