I've been told -- off the record, and I appreciated the candor, it took some of the sting out -- that I would have been chosen for a couple of different jobs except that they needed to hire a minority, and although hiring a woman helped, being able to hire a female who was a member of a minority was a double.
On the other hand, I've been passed over because they felt having a woman "like me????" in a male workplace would cause problems with the wives.
I've also been stuck in a position as an assistant manager where we had a staff member who was stealing (along with being incompetent and coming in to work pilled up) and HR told us we could NOT fire her as she was the only minority in our store and the company, overall, was short minority workers. It wasn't like the manager had screened minorities out, he'd done the opposite to try to even things out and he'd actually hired several people but, for some reason, none of them showed for work the first day -- at a music store -- with benefits if you worked 20 hours a week! Go figure.
So yes, it does happen, and it sucks to be on EITHER side of the equation.
The whole issue shouldn't even be an issue. It should be PEOPLE, what's underneath the skin, not the amount of melanin in our skin.