I don't think the vast majority of people would disagree with your characterization of what equal rights SHOULD be. That's not really the question though. The question is whether or not laws and policies purporting to support or uphold "equal rights" actually do that or not. Even if laws and policies regarding equality are not intended to lead to special treatment, they still sometimes can. Sometimes such policies don't make any sense at all.
This becomes difficult to talk about without discussing specific laws and policies and their effects. However, there seems to be this built-in assumption that companies that are less diverse must be discriminatory and non-inclusive. This is not necessarily true. If the people running a company are reasonably intelligent then they should be hiring the most qualified people for the job based on things like education, experience and past performance. Race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, etc. should have nothing to do with it. Hiring the most qualified people may lead to a diverse environment and it may not. It certainly won't always. Diversity for diversity's sake, in most cases, doesn't make any sense, certainly not at the expense of having the best people for the job.
There is not a built in assumption. That seems to be a built in assumption of an assumption. I was not debating "diversity for diversity's sake". Being diverse when hiring allows for a higher chance of hiring the more qualified people. Being diverse in hiring doesn't mean you HAVE to hire this person over that person due to skin color or gender, etc. It means you insure your range of applicants is actually diverse if able and you do not ignore people just because they are a particular skin color or gender, etc. Its been less about laws and how particular businesses/universities/etc go about this. Diversity does not mean ignoring merit. This seems to be a built in assumption for some. Nowhere did I say ignore merit or only higher certain demographics or mention a quota, etc. My point was also very clearly, Equal Rights are not "Special Rights" as so many opponents of equal rights like to say. If I was saying diversity mean ignoring merit, I would had said that. This is another classic misunderstanding as well, that diversity means ignoring merit. It's the opposite. It's about not ignoring merit. It's about not ignoring people who have the skills or are better skilled due to their skin color, gender, religion, etc. Thanks for your input tho. I hope you keep what I said in mind.
The problem is that the diversity of a company is measured based on the employees of the company, not by the pool of candidates that were considered. Diversity goals are measured based on company make-up. Unfortunately, considering a diverse applicant pool does not always lead to a diverse result. This is what I was getting at by talking about that built-in assumption. I agree that a company that does not discriminate widens its pool of applicants and will result in better results overall. Given that, this seems like a problem that would take care of itself as companies that consider a diverse work force will do better than ones that don't (or don't do a good job of it).
I guess in summary I would say that considering a diverse applicant pool is absolutely the right thing to do and will result in better results. However, laws, regulations, and policies that attempt to impose diversity goals result in "special" rights, not "equal" because of how diversity is measured if for no other reason. Diversity goals that are measured based on the make-up of a company are just quotas by another name.