[jfengel]

Absolutely. It may be positive without being purely altruistic. Companies benefit from diversity directly in a number of ways.

* It reduces the number of those moments where you do something stupid and insensitive because a bunch of identical-looking people all nodded and said "Sure, I don't see any problems with that".

* It not only increases the talent pool, but gives that new talent a reason to think that they'll actually be accepted because there are already some faces like theirs.

* You get new perspectives on user needs and potential markets.

As, you say, it's easy to do it wrong. But the self-fulfilling prophecy where people hire those who look like themselves -- and then conclude that people who look like that must be the most successful -- is always going to make certain mistakes over and over. Always with the same shrug and "Well, what are you gonna do?"