While being a long term hn lurker, I finally decided to create an account to post because I think my life experience might have something interesting to contribute to this discussion.

While I understand your questions about the end goal of diversity, I feel differently about the benefits people get from it.

> Perhaps the value of diversity is not diversity itself, but rather having a selection of possible groups into which a new hire might chose to integrate?

Here I disagree. While it might be an improvement for people to have an option of a group to self-segregate with - I really do feel that having true meaningful relationships with people of diverse backgrounds (across what ever dimension you are considering) provide tremendous value. I know it sounds a bit like a TV Public Service Announcement, but allow me to give a bit of background.

To me it is natural. I grew up in NYC - a fairly diverse city. I went to a somewhat diverse high school. Throughout most of my life, the majority of my friends have been of different races (black, white, latino, asian,..), religions (christian, jewish, muslim, buddhist, hindu), wealthy, poor.... I've been surrounded by interracial, interethnic, interreligious marriages and honestly thought little of it. It wasn't until I left nyc for college and afterwards for work, that I realized how rare my life experiences were. At that point I realized how different the average persons's life - and how it usually consisted of them being around people that were fairly similar to them. And it's not that there aren't tons of self-selecting self-similar groups in nyc (because like everywhere in the world of course there are and it's the norm); it was that normal life consisted of so continuously moving between different homogeneous and different diverse groups that people understood what it was like to be both in the majority and in the minority - as well as connect with people who were in either.

One example for me was baseball. In middle school, in the span of 3 years I played on 3 different mostly homogeneous baseball teams. An essentially all black little league team one year where I was in the majority, followed by an essentially all latino little league team (a different neighborhood) followed by an essentially all white middle school team. Between the three teams: The first I was a member of the homogeneous group, the second had a different racial minority be the homogeneous group, and the third had the societal majority group be the homogeneous group. All three were different experiences, but in the end... it's all baseball.

The baseball experience and others like it give you a different view of group social dynamics and people you are different from. One other notable point in my life that shaped my views on diversity and acceptance came during my later high school and early college years. It was through interactions with a generalized group of people. In nyc at the time people usually pejoratively referred to them as "bridge and tunnelers" (a term I never particularly cared for). What I saw of them, they were suburbanites living mostly in new jersey or long island who commuted into nyc to party on weekends. If I had to make a generalization comparison I would say there was some overlap with what people think of as the "Jersey Shore", but actual real normal people and not absurd reality tv caricatures. So it was a group I hadn't interacted with much previously, but as I started hanging out with friends a night a bit more, began to interact with them some more through friends of friends or random city encounters. There was something about them that I didn't like - but I couldn't understand why. It was very rare I would have a dislike for a generalized group of people, and am usually pretty easily able to relate to people individually regardless of what particular background they were, but I knew from trying that I couldn't successfully relate to them in conversation. Not that we couldn't have a conversation, but that it didn't feel like a natural conversation, at best just a superficial interaction. I was too young to understand at the time, but I realized later in life my issue with the was that they didn't play by the rules that new yorkers did.

My view of the rules was that people meet, they have differences, they find commonalities and connect over it. But they didn't seem to do that. They had a specific sub-culture and the implicit rule was that to connect with one of them you needed to match their sub-culture. There was no real sharing, no common ground, no meet in the middle. It was connect by adhering to their sub-culture or not connecting. And when differences were noted if was often with derision (ex. A version of the "You actually like that food {blah} of {insert ethnic group here} it's so {weird/smelly/...}"). And I don't mean that they were mean or bad people, or had any form of malice - my conclusion was simply that their values were shaped by being around people who were always very similar to them. It's the exact same way that a new yorker upon meeting someone might comment "You're actually a Boston Red Sox fan? That's ridiculous - they're a terrible franchise." (side note, people's views on sports for whatever reason are somewhat stickier and less accepting than other areas of their lives). It's a comment in ny that probably a lot of people wouldn't think twice about because they're surrounded by so many people who think similarly. It's not a negative marker of who they are, it's simply that they've essentially been around people who mostly hold similar views. (And, btw if you happen to be one of those new yorkers who hasn't left the city, spend some time outside of the city and you'll be shocked to find out how much of the rest of the country can't stand the Yankee's. Especially when they were winning.)

So for that Yankee's fan, I think the best thing is for them to spend some time outside of new york. Have lots of conversations where people discuss the yankees before they know you're a fan. Hear them talk about their team. Afterwards the Yankees fan doesn't have to feel guilty about rooting for the Yankees, nor feel they need to root for them any less. But sitting in an airport on the west coast having a conversation with someone it might be a bit easier for them to say "I realize you're an SF Giants fan, and I'm a Yankees fan, but we can still find stuff to connect over because... hey it's baseball."

So this post has gone on long enough. I could write a ton more, but I feel that I've made my points as best as I could. I truly feel that having meaningful relationships with a diverse group of people in all aspects of life is one of life's greatest benefits and should be the goal in itself. And I felt the need to share this because I've realized as I've aged that this might be something that some people may not know due to simply not having the opportunity to experience it first hand. If the only thing you've experienced is "diversity day" style diversity, or "token diversity" I could completely see the desire to look for the purpose of diversity vs. seeing it as the actual goal.

I could make an analogy to diversity of knowledge of programming languages. If a person sees learning a second programming language as an exercise in "I should 'know' a second language because I'll be more marketable", or "because someone told me it's good" and spends a week or so looking into it they may not find it extremely beneficial in and of itself. But learning and gaining meaningful experience in functional programming the first time is a really self-benefiting task. Even if you never use it professionally, or even if you never use it again, the ideas you are exposed to in a language like Lisp or Haskell change the way you program and think in your language of choice. Diversity of views _is_ the benefit.

My final thoughts are this. If you've ever traveled to a foreign country and stayed with with a family where you barely spoke the language, didn't know the culture, had never tried the food but were completely welcomed like family it's an amazing experience and anyone who has experienced it will agree. That is what being inclusive and accepting of people who are different looks like - they accepted you. That type of acceptance in the presence of difference is what the model of successful diversity looks like to me.