Thanks for a great diary rdf.  The US has developed in a different way to the UK in terms of civil rights, and anti-discrimiantion legislation and measures for action.  Similar lessons are learned here though.  Ask organisations to voluntarily 'do the right thing' and they don't.  Legislate for it and it will eventually have more of an impact and peopel get used to it.  

But when the ethos is to drive for profits and not take into consideration the part that each individual and each company has to play in society, then doing the right thing is always disfavoured unless it forms part of a companies marketing approach.

The point around how those who have not faced overt discrimiantion are more likely to think measures are not needed or that discrimination is a thing of the past, is quite important.  But some recent research in the UK showed that younger women are more likely to think that gender discrimiantion is a thing of the past, when actually it is quite clearly worsening lately.  Often people don't see discrimination because the more overt and blatant discrimination is known to be a no-no, generally and people won't overtly show their prejudices.  So discrimination manifests itself in much more subtle ways, which are harder to see, point at, explain and tackle.