Oh yeah; this sort of thing is common here. (Not the murdering-the-wife bit...) There are a lot of companies around town who have a figurehead woman or minority owner. A common paradigm: Someone, a guy, decides to start his own company to pursue government contracts. He sets it up with his wife as the nominal CEO and 51% stockholder. The wife does a lot of the interacting with government contracting officials, while the husband does most of the actual running-the-business stuff. (This is not to say that the wife isn't doin work, but it's the husband who makes the business go.)

Everyone involved knows what game is being played; it's openly acknowledged. Some of the nominal woman/minority owners are actually quite good, or get to be over time, but some of them are quite frankly there strictly for looks. Military contracts generally require 10% of the dollar value to be set aside for woman, minority, and veteran small business. It's easy work if you can get it. However, the flip side is that there is a hard cap on how successful you can be; if your business grows past a certain number of employees, it's no longer a "small business" and it loses elibility for a lot of the set-asides.

One thing that has really aggrevated this problem is the tendency, since the Clinton days of William Perry as SecDef, for the DoD to bundle up huge chunks of work into winner-take-all mega contracts. Only the Boeings and the Lockheed Martins have the resources to bid on or execute these. In order to meet their set-aside requriements, they form bidding teams with woman and minority owned businesses. If you are a small business and you don't have that all-important woman or minority ownership, you are locked out of the market; you aren't eligible for a position as a set-aside team member, and you aren't big enough to bid on the contract as a prime.

Yup. That's why I'll own my husband's welding business. (He's going to need my help with the books, etc anyway.) It's not just contracts with the government that have these quotas: in a lot of cities, you have to use a certain percentage of minority/woman-owned subcontracting businesses if you get tax incentives for locating your business there.
So I guess I'm safe, since if he kills me he won't eligible for those contracts any more!

There have been numerous efforts to try to get the government to do away with its women and minority quotas. There seems to be a fear that if those aren't in place, the only people who will get those contracts will be white men and all those women and minorities will either starve or die from exposure. I think that the policy has gone on long enough that it isn't really necessary and I would like to see the government abandon it for a year to see what happens.

Companies do this in regular hiring as well. The largest/biggest hospital group in town routinely posts positions for the exact same work I used to do and other similar work. On their online application it specifically asks for race, gender, and ethnicity. They claim it to be optional and not used in the hiring process. Okay. I used "decline to state" and was promptly rejected and receive letters stating they are seeking more qualified candidates although I wonder what that entails when I already exceed all the required qualifications and their preferred qualifications. I changed my answers on race/gender to be a white female. Same rejection letters. On the suggestion of a friend/lawyer I changed the answers to reflect I was a minority female. Surprise! They called for an interview two days after I applied. Then during the interview, the hiring manager made the comment that she thought I was that minority but I didn't look or sound like it. WTF?! All three of my applications went for the same job position, just slightly different work hours. A friend of mine from my previous job who was let go at the same time as me also applied for this job. She only met a few of the job requirements but is black and Hispanic. She got hired for the position. She says companies like her because she's technically two minorities and they can count her twice to boost their minority numbers.

"On the suggestion of a friend/lawyer I changed the answers to reflect I was a minority female. Surprise! They called for an interview two days after I applied." - BunnyGirl

I have been tempted to try this as well. It would probably be a lot easier to pull off if my (real) name wasn't so Anglo-sounding. It's too bad I can't apply with this pseudonym.

Even though the deception would get me a job interview, I doubt I would get hired once anyone met me in person.

My last name is definitely ethnic sounding. I'm always asked what ethnicity it is and nobody can pronounce it. It's a French name, but I'm often asked if it's Greek, Portuguese, Eastern European, or Ethiopian though. I don't really have an "ethnic" look to me though. I have pasty white skin, blue eyes, and reddish blonde hair. My ethnic background is German, Norwegian, French, and Irish so I look very Caucasian. Of course, I've also been told only certain ethnicities count toward minority status; black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, Russian.

BunnyGirl, just tell them that you're a "white hispanic" or if you're feeling particularly annoyed, "black irish".

"Portland Superintendent Carole Smith has criticized a group of parents for their complaints about an African-American principal and recommended diversity training for them."

It seems like school administrators are determined to beat lawyers in a race to the bottom.

How about men start saying they "identify as female"...and whites say they "identify as...".

I live in a very Hispanic neighborhood...can I identify as Hispanic...also I'm adopted...so I can make any shit up right?

And what no special preference for gays? Even married people could identify as bisexual. Or a married man married to a woman identifying as a woman can identify as a lesbian as well.

"Even though the deception would get me a job interview, I doubt I would get hired once anyone met me in person."

This is where you double down, a la Elizabeth Warren. Come at them with, "Oh, just becuase I identify as Hispanic (to use an example), you expect me to come in wearing a poncho and sombrero? Stereotype much?" If you're a woman, you can pull that off. Men who don't look "ethnic" can't get away with it, though.

That doesn't surprise me Gog. I live in Portland and everyone's gone bat-shit crazy.