How is this a hard concept? You still have to be a pilot, you just can't have a policy - tacit or explicit - of only hiring white men.

Couldn't you have gone with the idea that it's "taking jobs from white men?" Then I could point out that there isn't a limited pool of specific unemployed people you have to pick from, and that even if you give a job to a white man it's still taking a job from a different white man?