Some people claim that to be a programmer you need to have a certain personality or hobbies, and this is wrong.
But nerd elitism is also a reaction to having been excluded, ridiculed and sometimes bullied. That doesn't make it right, but it also means that bashing nerds and nerd culture, as is all to common amongst progressives, is both unfair and counterproductive.
What I would like to see more people saying is that it's ok that many people in tech have certain hobbies or personality traits in common, but that a person doesn't have to have these things to work in tech.
I have no references to back this up, but I think it would make an interesting longitudinal study, or if you were somewhat cruel, a twin study: are children that spend most of their play time building with Legos or Kinex or erector sets significantly more likely to end up as engineers and computer programmers?
If comp sci. was still seen as a thing for nerds with skin issues that don't get a lot of money you can bet there would be no "diversity" thing going on.
There should be no such thing. Instead of trying to bend ethics I'd rather make sure any one, from any skin color, gender, place of birth, etc. can do anything they want. THAT would be diversity.
The truth is that today what you can do with your life depends a LOT more on your place of birth than your skin color or gender.