They're just putting up with stupid crap for pay. Plenty of people do that. After you've got a couple jobs on your resume nobody knows or cares you were the diversity hire at your first one. Yeah the mere presence of diversity hires makes your accomplishments worth slightly less but it's still better for you to take advantage of it. See also: prisoner's dilemma.

Thanks for this comment, I was thinking along the lines of the parent to your post. You put that in perspective.

Doesn't it have an obvious answer? The people who accept this are the ones for whom this is the best option. Upside: money. Downside: offensive pandering. That's often better than being unemployed.

If that's true, then it's not just an offensive strategy, it's also ineffective for the business employing it. It's a way to select the lowest performing of a target group.

You serious? I’d take the “shame and dehumanisation” of being hired for my innate attributes rather than skill for a big tech company salary for sure. Wouldn’t even have to think about it.

Hell, I’m mostly learning software dev because it seems like the most straight forward to way to turn my above average intelligence in to money. I’d love to cut out the middle man and just receive a high iq allowance.

I don't think anyone does, but companies are absolutely desperate to meet the demands of (a subset of) society regarding diversity. That desperation manifests in funny ways.

The common minority person hates it usually. The more vocal ones are the people who directly benefit from this system, they effectively have a rent-seeking behavior hidden behind the "diversity" umbrella.

>they effectively have a rent-seeking behavior hidden behind the "diversity" umbrella

It's the Diversity & Inclusion Industrial Complex and it's related to all the other "industrial complexes" that form in that it's just a problem/industry specific manifestation of the Shirky Principle:

https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/