There is. But racial diversity has nothing to do with it.
The more diverse the backgrounds and thought patterns are of people on a team, the more likely they'll think of and consider solutions and paths that might not have been considered otherwise -- or see pitfalls in them.
If you're building a rocket to go to Mars, you absolutely want as much diversity in your engineering backgrounds as possible (assuming everyone already meets the engineering requirements in the first place).
Have you ever worked with someone that really gets the way you think? It's refreshing. The communication overhead is very low.
It seems I spend a great deal of my time trying to communicate things I already know with people of "diverse" thinking styles.
Don't worry about people being robotic clones of each other. It almost never happens. There is diversity enough without seeking out more blatant diversity.
I've learned an awful lot from people who think very differently than me. They make me reconsider my assumptions and quite often lead to a better solution.
The more diverse the backgrounds and thought patterns are of people on a team, the more likely they'll think of and consider solutions and paths that might not have been considered otherwise -- or see pitfalls in them.
If you're building a rocket to go to Mars, you absolutely want as much diversity in your engineering backgrounds as possible (assuming everyone already meets the engineering requirements in the first place).