Unfortunately, you've blundered into a more literate version of the Michael Scott "I don't see color" defense. The attitudes that prevent minority candidates from taking leadership roles aren't as obvious as "we don't cotton to your sort around heah!" racism, but are the unexamined assumptions about what constitutes "great people".
It's this blindness to the real root causes of discrimination that leads to tokenism and wasteful measures like "diversity departments", all while major cultural issues remain unexamined (how much unofficial debate and problem solving happens in the men's room? Why does the vice president's Thursday night bull session at the pub look like a J. Press catalog spread?) and unchanged