In some ways I agree; we're all shaped by adversity and experience. But I don't think you can ignore the incredible lack of people from black or hispanic backgrounds in tech either. The goal of increased diversity in entry level hiring is advanced by the suggested HBCU recruitment drive. Supporting it doesn't preclude recruiting from other talent pools.
That isn't at all what the commenter argued. They argued that diversity in ethnicity/race is not the same as diversity in background. The commenter did not provide a superlative or other qualifier.
If you hire a former gang-banger who is a wiz with eletronics, then you will have some real diversity.
Tech is often focused on the minutiae of our machines, but even then information and learning is not evenly distributed. I've worked with various minority engineers and also Indian/Chinese/Persian/etc and they've all had really different views on how to approach things, how to manage conflicts, and different mathematical backgrounds too.
This is the issue I have when discussing these matters with certain people. When everything is presented in such stark black-and-white terms there's little room for discussion.
Managment may think many things, but that presuposes that diversity of thought comes from the diversity of skin. I can practically guarantee that if your company hired a diverse mix of races, but they were all of technical background and straight HS to college to work then you would not get the diversity of thought you would get if you focused your spare hiring capacity on hiring retiring US marines, radar techs, prisoners, people close to retiring age or any other group that is typically left out (or persevered to be left out) of the typical high tech startup.