&gt; The&#x2F;my meritocratic process doesn&#x27;t care about race or gender. When I hire consultants and contract-out work, I often don&#x27;t know their race or gender and I&#x27;m not interested. I choose candidates in my price range based on the best work-samples.<p>It might be true for you.  We know it&#x27;s not true for many other people.  That&#x27;s why orchestras stick auditionees behind curtains.  It&#x27;s why people are advised to remove any protected characteristic information from their resumes&#x2F;CVs.<p>&gt; I&#x27;m going to stick with my approach of not caring about the gender, race, or any other _not at all relevant to their work or how I treat them as a person_ detail<p>I&#x27;d be interested in how you know you&#x27;ve eliminated this bit of strong conditioning, or whether you&#x27;re operating under a cognitive bias.<p>Because so far when we test people who say &quot;I don&#x27;t care about race &#x2F; sex &#x2F; etc&quot; we find people who do in fact care about it.