What Diversity Means to Us
Diversity is - or has sadly become - a 'four-letter' word. It's like a celebrated buzzword, too. In English, you cannot say "Diversity" without saying "DIE" or "DEI", but that's a side issue. It's pedantic nitpicking or a distraction from very serious issues. Diversity is truly important. Diversity, however, needs to be properly understood. Diversity is defined differently by different parties with conflicting or overlapping interests.
Those who shout or advertise "diversity" the loudest are deep-pocketed corporations (with a "generous" marketing budget allocated to branding), so they typically get to "define" it. They're already done the same with rainbows, counter-intuitively associating people who already suffered enough with the very same corporations that inflict the most suffering.
Diversity means a lot of things to many people. IBM has weaponised the term to the point of using it to attack actual diversity.
Attaining diversity isn't hard provided people do not discriminate against others, e.g. based on beliefs, skills, race, gender and so on.
It's rather saddening that, both in the political and the corporate spheres, diversity has been twisted and redefined through the lenses of profit (money), i.e. how to adjust demographies/demographics to maximise profits, improve a private brand, earn votes etc.
We can live in a society where people are, by default, nice to one another. The key thing is default. Because some people prove to be horrible and antisocial - discrimination against them becomes well-earned. It can be argued that it is karma (on a personal level, not collective), not discrimination.
The problems above are not limited to Free software, to the sciences (including Computer Science), or to the "industry". It's an old conundrum, literally centuries old. Those who know how to tackle things can more successfully shape healthy organisations, communities, political parties etc.
But the key point to make here is that it's not a Free software thing and it would be dishonest to paint it that way; yet worse, the yardsticks are being set in stone by the super-rich (i.e. corporations), so they're biased by design. We need to define terms such as "discrimination" and "diversity" based on more objective, societal criteria. The oppressed should decide, not the oppressor.
Rulers (of capital) don't get to lecture us on morality. They need to look at a mirror. █
