He is telling a lie. I know employment law because I hired people. A business can only tell a person they didn't get a job because they felt other candidates were more qualified. If a business is mandated to hire people of color it is because the EEOC has found them to be practicing racial discrimination in their hiring practices.
Excuse me? I am most definitely not lying. It wasn’t a matter of not getting the job... it was a matter of not even being considered... because the State or Federal Government were unconstitutionally interfering in the hiring practices of these companies.
You are lying. No company can tell you that you weren't considered because of race or anything else but BFOQ'S. And what you are describing if anything, is the unconstitutional behavior of the companies you are talking about.
What pisses me off, besides a lot, is that people like this automatically assume that they have better qualifications than the person hired. If someone has better credentials, that's the person who gets hired. It helps to ace the interview, too. I've seen cases in which someone sued over not being hired, but the candidate who was hired had much better answers when asked a hypothetical question during the interview.