The enormous assumption underlying this ideology is that the most important quality of a person is their race or gender - that diverse races and genders means diverse perspectives on a how to achieve a goal.

That's simply not true. The genuinely important perspectives people can bring to a project have nothing to do with race and gender. A dozen white men (or a dozen women of colour) can be more diverse in their outlooks and approaches to business than a rainbow of racial and gender identities. They can differ on short-term rather than long-term thinking. On details versus big picture. On thorough process versus improvisation. Etc. etc.

The progressive left has become a mirror image of the traditional right of decades past - both regard race and gender as the most important traits about a person, and seek to define everyone's role in society by their race and gender. It's bizarre.