How is it not discrimination to ask for someone’s race on job applications, and hire for reporting purposes?

Racial quotas are discrimination. Racial quotas are illegal acts. The Supreme Court has had a socialist majority who broke their oath to defend the Constitution. They did these illegal acts for the "greater good." Such policies have made harmony between the races worse since the unconstitutional "Civil Rights' Act of 1968." This Act was know to be illegal by the supporters at the time. So they put an expiration date on the policies of discrimination. Then when the Act expired and did not do what the had hoped it would do, they extended the expiration date instead of re-writing the Act and making it Constitutional.

They collect the information because the federal government makes them collect it and report on it. The data really is kept separately from the application (either paper or electronic) and not used in hiring decisions. It is required that the data be kept separately, and no employer is going to risk a lawsuit by ignoring that.

If anyone told you they are looking only for minority candidates, that's a problem unless the employer is a government agency under a specific order to redress past discrimination, but these are extremely rare.

The form is so employers can complete the EEO-1 or EEO-4 report.

If the company is required to have a formal equal opportunity plan, the information is used for that reporting.

"Also, for a couple jobs, I was told by the companies HR that they’re strictly looking for minority candidates."

- who told you this?

- if the company has an formal EEO plan and is underrepresented in a specific demographic for a certain role, they may be hiring based on race, if the person is qualified.

If you are in the US, this information request is NOT on applications (look again), you will see the question later during the hiring process. It is on a form called the "Voluntary Self Identification Form", and as the form states, you do NOT have to answer the questions. You simply circle the statement at the top that says "Prefer Not To Answer". Putting the race questions on an application in the US is basically illegal. The Voluntary Self Identification form is for reporting statistic to the US government in a periodic report. No names are included.

I will say that when I hire someone into our company HR software (Oracle) , the software does not have the Prefer Not to Answer option. That means I'm suppose to guess at it and check mark the most likely boxes for Race, Sex and Veteran's status.

That form goes to the Government as it does here in the UK. It is for Census to see how many people of different races are employed.

We do not have a problem with filling it in here.

I leave the space blank.

it is not

well blame the federal government for that requirement...as companies have to track that information for diversity

The race, ethnicity, and gender questions at the end are actually required of companies that do business with the federal government. They are supposed to demonstrate a diverse applicant pool.

That part of the application is supposed to be separated from the rest of the application before it goes to the hiring manager. It's just used to create a statistical report.

Companies that state that they are looking for minority candidates are another story. There's usually some specific reason to do so; I won't speculate.

it's for Govt statistics