I have told this story before, but this seems like a good time to repeat it.
Years ago we had a black Yale graduate who was brought into the company. He was a very nice guy, always dressed well, very friendly with everyone, and a team player.
We never had any issues with him.
However, it was blatantly obvious that he was not that bright—and Yale had taken him because of the color of his skin.
There were very few professional blacks in our industry, and within a couple of years one of our competitors stole him from us and made him President of one of their major divisions.
It took two years of his leadership before that division went broke and had to be divested from their company at a huge loss.
It was totally predictable—and really a tragedy for all involved.
Similar experience with a black Harvard law grad. As a lawyer, I had trouble understanding his reasoning process but was afraid to criticize it. After he left a meeting, I and another colleague tried to summarize what he had just said. Neither one of us could make sense of it. That emboldened us to inquire further with others whom he had advised. They didn’t understand him either. It was theorized that, perhaps, his legal intellect so far exceeded ours that we were just too stupid to get it. General Counsel thought otherwise and finally cut him loose.