Someone who not only understands, but can effectively communicate and explain that Black Lives Matter is a movement to call for the acknowledgement of black people’s pain and suffering under societal structures, both historically and presently, is demonstrating to you the following important professional skills they possess:

This is both extremely politicized and subjective, and ironically, it points to the total homogeneity of dogma in Silicon Valley. As a candidate that would meet all of your "diversity" requirements, I would fail your BLM test spectacularly - and again, ironically - because my "diversity of background and life experience" has afforded me that perspective. And your attempt to tie that to professional skills is not only disingenuous, but a blatant show of bias at work.

This essay is a precisely why diversity of thought is what SV needs. A bunch of people that all look different or come from different places but think exactly the same way is not diversity. That's the most simple-minded, elementary, surface-level approach to diversity and it is markedly dangerous.

Stop pushing your personal and political agenda of exclusion, indoctrination, and targeted favoritism under the guise of diversity and inclusion. There are real diversity issues in tech. Rhetoric like this only distracts from and silences the genuine efforts that are being made to improve those issues.

Somehow I knew what the content would be with the only tipoff being the use "tech companies."

No one ever invokes "tech" unless they're about to talk about diversity.

As a minority, I have found some flaws in your letter, but I wouldn't want to go into details. Overall, good read. I agree because currently, I am the only woman in a room full of male devs with very similar life stories. I am different in every way except skin color. I don't feel as a part of a team at all the times. We need diversity in IT.

My question right off the bat is, when and where did these 6 companies refer to hiring for diversity as lowering the bar? With no citation, I'm really not buying the assertion. According to Comparably, three of the mentioned companies rank in the top ten for tech companies in gender equality and/or racial diversity.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/10/these-10-tech-companies-are-doing-the-best-at-diversity-according-to-comparably/

Yes, of course.

If there are flaws in this argument, it pales in comparison to the imbalance already present in the industry, and the flaws in companies that are overly homogenous and don't have a culture of respect for other backgrounds, histories, skin colors, genders, and other human differences. That difference—true diversity—really does make companies stronger.

And no, I'm sorry, disagreeing with your weak narrow-minded opinion on diversity is not in the same bucket as respecting diverse opinions and backgrounds of other cultures, races, and genders. That's a negative and inhuman argument that you need to think about on your own if you're actually upset about your privileged voice not being respected enough.