Which is why the entire concept of demographics-based "diversity" is such a shambles. The premise is supposed to be that if you get some women and minorities in there then you'll have a diversity of opinion.
But then you select for the women willing to work 80 hour weeks, which is highly atypical and selects out e.g. prospective mothers, ensuring they're not represented in your organization. You select for the minorities with degrees from prestigious schools which selects out people who know what it's like to grow up poor.
You end up with diversity on paper but not in practice, which is not only useless but worse than nothing because it creates the impression that you now have a diversity of opinion and you don't.
The example I like is which would be more diverse in a silicon valley tech company - 1) an African American guy who grew up upper-middle class and went to an Ivy League school and always voted for "progressive" candidates or 2) a white guy who grew up poor in West Virginia, was the first to go to college and has an affinity for right wing politics?
No one was self-made. If you hired in mid-career you were seen as different and if you brought a different point of view they just nodded their heads and basically ignored what you said until you came around to thier point of view. The most non-diverse environment I have ever seen.
If you wanted actual diversity then what you would presumably do is gather all the data you can on multiple metrics (birthplace, parental income, culture, language, etc.) and then hire for maximum entropy. "Diversity" hiring based on a specific individual metric is literally the opposite of that, because it finds the people who are the least unlike the existing people in your company but can check the box on the form.
I've seen this described as "privilege of individuality", a privilege accorded to the majority and denied to the minority: https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/135278572082239488...
I also always took the "ambassador" to be an external facing thing. They speak for their culture at that company; the places I've seen it I was never given the impression that they were meant to be an ambassador for their entire culture. Maybe I was misreading it, though.
Then they company has a personal responsiblity to change rather than a checkbox to check off , much like the "what race are you" checkbox given to pander to their diversity quota.
I blame society, people cry about diversity but all they want to see is someone of a particular type in a manager position and never really as, "what is this person doing", "do they really get to make an impact". Diversity propaganda is all so shallow and has only made relationships different cultures worse.
Also you: "You pretty much have to make it non profitable for companies to not be diverse."
/facepalm/
Things can be made non-profitable outside of government interventions like fines of tax incentives etc.
In fact, the parent's position is an 100% consistent libertarian position: they believe that such a problem will (or wont) be solved by the market itself, and that companies should follow such incentives not being forced by laws.
E.g. diversity would be good economically for companies, because else they will lose black, asian, indian, etc talent they could hire.
This reminds me of a VC/incubator who was offering a favorable equity loan hybrid where you get no strings funding with the additional benefit that you can buy your equity back at any time for 3x the original investment. It turns out that this met the needs of a lot of black and female founders even though diversity was not even an explicit goal. You could literally feel the HN commenters roll their eyes while they said "So this is just a terrible loan with high interest rates?" as if having access to business loans is completely natural like breathing air, when it's the exception for black people.
In the 20 years I've been working in tech, I've seen countless candidates rejected because of "culture fit." Of those, the majority were women; but also black, Hispanic, and indigenous men. Only one was a white guy: he was overtly sexist towards every woman he encountered, including the HR recruiter.
Edit: oh, I forgot one. One white guy was slightly effeminate by north American standards, and wasn't considered after somebody made a comment to the effect of "I think it's weird when men wear scarves". I think he was French (or Québécois), and I wouldn't speculate about his sexuality
Ironically, this was most likely cringe because there were no minorities on the staff, a consequence of: no diversity.
I observed a similar event in the early 90's when a bunch of white folk in HR tried to show off diversity during a co-op tour and had posters of Africa all over the room. But why would I expect someone who just learned the term to actually grok it?
Bummer you go the offensive end of that.
EDIT: From the article "It was when I first realized that tech leaders have no idea what it is to manage work dynamics through a gendered lens."
When minorities are made "ambassadors" as though they suddenly speak for EVERYONE in their minority, it is awful, and wrong. People don't get this: "But X minority said it was OK..." No, it takes literal diversity of opinion.