Yeah, but if you're saying you would prefer applicants not be of a certain race, that is kinda racist.
No it's not racist at all. Saying you won't hire people on the basis of race for no other reason than race is racist, saying we are only going to employ people of a specific ethinc group is racist.
Saying we would like to hear from people who are not specifically of a particular race is not racist at all, it's entirely shitty, but it's not racist.
Only in certain rare exceptions.
No, not under rare exceptions. It is ALWAYS legal to say "would particularly like to hear from you if you are not white and not male." Encouraging people to apply under any circumstance is not now, nor should it ever be illegal.
It is illegal to post a job add showing a preference for a certain gender or race (save very rare situations which don't apply here). That's true both in the US and Canada.
No it really isn't. But if you think it is please feel free to cite the specific law that says you cannot encourage a group of people to apply for a position.
What group is being encouraged? The ad is specifically being phrased as encouraging everyone . . . other than a very specific sub-group based on race and sex.
Which is not the same thing as discouraging them.
Saying "we want you to apply for this job, particularly if you're not an old black guy"
Which would totally be a valid argument had it said that, but it didn't.
What they said was & again I quote: "would particularly like to hear from you if you are not white and not male."
See how "would particularly like to hear from you if you are not white and not male" & "we want you to apply for this job, particularly if you're not an old black guy" are two completely different statements, saying to completely different things.
In fact even this
"We particularly want to hear from everyone who is not Matthew_Lane. If Matthew_Lane is discouraged by that, that's her problem."
doesn't work.
The sentiment to make this work would be: "would particularly like to hear from you if you are not matthew_lane." See how these statements are very different.
You really are trying to manufacture personal offense where none exists.