Diversity is originally about diversity of thought, experience and knowledge. Things that actually affected the way a problem was approached and how innovations occur.
Since then it's been perverted into being about superficial immutable physical characteristics like sex and skin color, which is now, ironically, contributing to more racial discrimination and less meritocracy than before. It's a clear example of the "road to hell being paved with good intentions".
The modern zeitgeist appears to disregard individualism in exchange for group identity. Thus by having diversity of group identities you are supposedly getting diversity of thought. Each group bringing their own backgrounds and experiences, with all members within a group adhering to the narrative of said group. I find the whole thing exceedingly racist but even that term has been redefined so here we are.
By focusing on diversity like this you are elevating these immutable characteristics beyond the importance of individuality, pre-judging what people will bring to a team based on things like skin color or gender. It seems like racism has just gone full circle. I'm sure I will get downvoted to hell as this is a very unpopular take.
I think a lot of measures are taken out of concern for optics and without consideration as to whether they are addressing the underlying causes or merely the symptoms.
First there’s the pressure of “we have to do something now and it has to be externally apparent”, the choice to go with the most outwardly visible change, then other organizations following suit, and soon it becomes mandatory with everyone convinced they are working on resolving the underlying problem.
However, even if the underlying causes behind socio-psychological dynamics that fuel discrimination and xenophobia are unlikely to be best addressed through eliminating the symptoms of it by enforcing diversity via the very mechanism of discrimination by external in-born traits, that action may still help address some adjacent core problems (for example, somewhat reducing the income gap correlating with certain such traits).
Suppressing symptoms doesn’t necessarily lead to understanding the root causes, and in fact may do the opposite as relieved symptoms leave the impression of successful treatment.
Of course, to reiterate, in this case the ‘treatment’ is likely addressing the root causes of adjacent problems, and in dire circumstances even a temporary relief could be worth it, so I would not call against it.
My worry is that as one particular way of addressing discrimination (through applying discrimination, no less) becomes the default, it’s cargo-culted and there is very little incentive to understand and fix the underlying issues that said discrimination is a symptom of—which (underlying issues) may well fester until they manifest themselves as a new, possibly worse symptom.
Since then it's been perverted into being about superficial immutable physical characteristics like sex and skin color, which is now, ironically, contributing to more racial discrimination and less meritocracy than before. It's a clear example of the "road to hell being paved with good intentions".