Contradiction/Affirmative Action

I'm applying for some graduate jobs at cool places, the eBay family (eBay, PayPal, Skype and others) amongst them. On their form, I found the following two sentences, very close together:

"As such, eBay Inc. is required to take affirmative action to employ qualified minorities, women, and veterans."

"eBay Inc. maintains a policy of considering all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability or veteran status."

Now, I don't bring this up to pick holes in their logic (or their spelling of 'colour'), but more as an example of quite how ridiculous 'affirmative action' is, in my opinion*.

If a company is found to be actively discriminating against say, people called Jim, then I agree entirely that they should be punished for this. This is known as 'anti-discrimination legislation' and has nothing to do with 'affirmative action'.

However, if a company just happens to have no Jims on its staff, then it's ridiculous to say that they should take 'action to remedy this'. You see, action to remedy this lack of Jims will have to involve actively discriminating against the Steves of this world. And then the company needs to be punished for discrimination again...

Affirmative action is, quite frankly, a joke. There's stopping discrimination, and there's advocating it - and I don't see quite how the twain are supposed to meet.

eBay should always employ the best suited person for the job. Given their success, I don't doubt that this is exactly what they do. So, why on earth are they being asked in the first sentence above to 'take action' to ensure they employ certain demographics? And how do they reconcile that legal requirement with their equal employment policy set out in the second sentence above?

Seriously, I have no idea. Anyone?

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* <sup>I write 'in my opinion' only to make that sentence scan a bit more nicely:

a) Of course it's my opinion, I'm the only one who writes here.
b) My opinion is right. Always. Don't get the impression I lack faith in my beliefs simply because I added those three words.</sup>