Always looking for that thin angle to shoehorn your garbage in, eh, semi?
Adams has said many times that he was told directly to his face that it was race.
Adams: "I quit the bank when my female boss told me the order came down to not promote white men."
But you do you. 'Race was not his limiting factor - it may have been something else.'
In my career (now retired) I had several promotions that were denied to me and given (in all cases) to hispanic females.
The bosses openly admitted (after a couple of drinks at the local watering hole) that I was far more qualified but they had quotas to meet—and hispanic females checked off two boxes at once.
In a couple of cases I had to visit the location years later to clean up the messes the ladies had created—good thing I had a dark sense of humor.
If I had a boss stupid enough to tell me something that illegal I'd feel like an idiot for working for her.
On the other hand, if I needed to rationalize my mediocre accomplishments...
At a college fair, the rep for Salvo Regina flat out said white boys get less in scholarship money.