The candidate I hired (who I partially gave the job to because of diversity reasons) was the wrong choice but I won't admit.

I work in HR and after a long, tiring hiring process for a senior position in my company, we finally hired a candidate. I am not proud to admit this, but one of the reasons we chose him was because he was black. One of our company values is diversity and I even got several emails from my bosses asking how many candidates from different ethnicities have applied. We even delayed the process for several days to get more applications. <br><br>At the end, we got 2 candidates, one white and one black. They both had around 10 years of experience, but the black one was slightly more qualified and had slightly better references. We were about to give the job to the white candidate, but when we saw that the black candidate was slightly more qualified, we played it safe and gave him the job. Both candidates were very skilled and presented both well, so we figured it wouldn't hurt to give the job to the slightly more qualified candidate and just play the diversity card if anyone complained.<br><br>Fast forward 4 months, the guy has been doing a horrible job. He's very arrogant and has a very hard time getting along with his coworkers. He's extremely defensive and has even tried to play the victim in front of his colleagues, saying things like, "you wouldn't be saying this if I was white". I received several complaints about him from different people in the company, and even got called by an old reference of his, saying that we should let him go or try and work on him before it's too late. It's becoming a very uncomfortable situation, and I know we need to let him go, but I'm afraid to because I'm afraid the diversity people will come after us.