"Diverse teams" does not mean having a proper ratio of white, Hispanic, male, female, straight, gay or ginger. It means having people who have complimentary skills for a task and everyone got to that point differently. A legal team made up of one person from Harvard, one from UCLA, one from Princeton and one from a no name school is a type of "diverse". It's even more if one person was an engineer first, one was JAG, another was an accountant or some other profession before getting into law. A legal team where everyone is from Harvard and that's all they know since they've done nothing else with their lives, but check off different minority boxes, and have a token redheaded stepchild ginger, is not diverse. It's pandering due to both being lazy and being useless.
Someone that diversifies teams actually has to know the team well, what they do, and identity their strengths and weaknesses. Then, they need to figure out what kind of person can bring the neccessary perspective or skillset to round out the team... but that takes work. It's easier to just say, "You dont have a ginger on your team, here you go. Diversity achieved!" This is why people hate "diversity heads". They're glorified checklists.
They can be. Credentialism facilitates structural racism and class boundaries. Nobody gives a shit about gingers, that is a red herring.
One of my parents used to work in the housing discrimination space. Those same types of arguments were used there. Instead of credentials, they’d advertise in targeted ways, like only advertising at law or medical schools, etc.
Recruiters use colleges as a legal discrimination technique to target specific class origins. Unless you win the college lottery and get into Harvard, it is not possible for a kid from an urban setting to get the gig at McKinsey that is the entry screener used to get certain gigs. It’s like the old British civil service.
Someone that diversifies teams actually has to know the team well, what they do, and identity their strengths and weaknesses. Then, they need to figure out what kind of person can bring the neccessary perspective or skillset to round out the team... but that takes work. It's easier to just say, "You dont have a ginger on your team, here you go. Diversity achieved!" This is why people hate "diversity heads". They're glorified checklists.