But if race and gender do not perform these functions something else would have to. Racism and sexism are functional. I think that is another way of saying they are 'rational' within capitalist rationality. Where workers have their consciousness raised, then perhaps they can see their long-term good, but I think that is very rare. And yet, across the board, whites get promoted ahead of minorities with similar skills and educational qualifications all the time.
All minorities are worse at everything that all whites and all whites deserve to get promoted.
Those people running an objective system are all racist and figure out ways to keep all minorities out of better positions. While there are some conscious racists, most people sub-consciously promote people who look like them. So as long as you have predominantly white males in positions of power, they are going to reproduce future leaders who look like themselves. Then, I have all the examples from my own experiences in a union, blue-collar shop where white males constantly took advantage of their demographics to keep their asses out of trouble. So, either the testing procedure itself was bigotted, or those grading the tests were failing minorities and women.