As someone that has worked on government construction projects extensively in the past 20 years I can attest to this for sure. There were times that it was suggested to me that I find a silent partner who is black in order to get preferential treatment with contracts and then I could have a much higher price in the bids and still win. I didn't do that and probably lost a few contracts because of it.. in fact I am aware of one that was awarded to a "diverse" company that I had undercut their cost by 10% (they were closed bids so I had no idea until after the fact) but it was awarded to them. Ironically, I ended up getting this contract anyway because the company that won the bid was grossly incapable of actually completing the project.