I don’t need to change to fit within my industry. My industry needs to change to make everyone feel included and accepted.
Human cultures in general just aren't that good at making different people feel at home. Given our history, why in the world would we expect any of them to be good at that at all? The natural inclination is to make the different individual, the outgroup person, conform to group norms. The way human cultures have dealt with our typically primate social instincts is to accede to them. The way we are with regard to our instincts and typical behaviors around groups is woven into our culture and the way we think. Also consider: We've probably been evolving our group instincts for far longer than we've had language. What would that imply about how deeply ingrained and how conscious such behaviors are?
Now, given that the above is true, what rationale can you come up with that would lead us to believe that our cultural knowledge equips us to deal well with diversity? Actually, I don't even think the "mental furnishings" in academic writings around these subjects that I've been exposed to are very useful to everyday people in everyday situations. (I could cite your suspicion around agendas to be evidence in this regard.) If there is any community that has the potential to engage in the "meta-level" self examination required to develop mental tools for dealing with this, I propose that certain subsets of the tech community are good candidates. (Though there is a lot of groupthink there as well.)
That's because cultures change on timescales of centuries. If it works at all like gene transmission works, it isn't worth adapting the culture : one of the cultures will die out in less than the time it would take to adapt.
This is called "island species" : where there are barriers that prevent gene/meme transmission (like an ocean before the internet), you can have different cultures/races. If you take away the barrier (in Darwin's book it was a rock surfacing that allowed birds to fly from one island to another), one of the cultures will die due to cross-pollination. It is theorized that for memes, racism is one such boundary.
In history you do see this happen. Racism occurs because only a single group lives in an area. For some reason (war, natural disaster, ...) a large group of foreignors moves in, peacefully (rarely) or not. Then there is a period of time where there is obvious racism, and it disappears. Once it's gone one of the cultures vanishes entirely, and racism slowly starts to rebuild.
So don't worry : your kids will have much less problems than you do, and your grandchildren will not even know what different cultures are anymore. Ironically, these days, racism is the one of the last things remaining that can keep cultures going in the 21st century. If we destroy that, a single monoculture (one of the existing cultures, by numbers, I'd say probably Chinese culture, by far the most homogeneous at such a size) will expand and destroy everything else.
That's because cultures change on timescales of centuries. If it works at all like gene transmission works, it isn't worth adapting the culture : one of the cultures will die out in less than the time it would take to adapt.
Your comment seems to carry assumptions about the granularity at which transmission works, which aren't appropriate for memes. Bacteria can gain the immunities from other bacterial species through plasmids. In the same way, people can appropriate ideas from other cultures/sub-cultures.
This is called "island species" : where there are barriers that prevent gene/meme transmission
What the historical record would suggest, is that effective barriers to memetic transmission are the exception rather than the rule. It's even more the exception in the era of the Internet.
Racism occurs because only a single group lives in an area.
Racism comes from outgroup psychology operating on signals involving race/ethnicity. I'd say that racism doesn't exist where there is no awareness of racial difference. (In those situations, classism and other forms of internecine prejudice can arise.)
It is theorized that for memes, racism is one such boundary.
Please give examples of memes for which racism acted as an effective boundary. Racism seems to have zero boundary effect in Japan and Korea, though their traditional cultures once institutionalized racism.
EDIT: Also, recent research has revealed that biological evolution can be detected in large mammals on the timescale of only several centuries.
She fought extremely hard over a long period to make herself fit within the industry, and found that had a profoundly detrimental effect on her health. That, not inclusiveness and diversity, is the status quo.
I doubt this will be a popular take on it, but she seems to have let coworkers she didn't particularly care for become her whole social life. Of course that would make someone quite unhappy. I was like that perhaps 10 years ago and I had to become much better at creating boundaries between work and the rest of my life; this made me much happier.
If she wanted a suggestion, I'd tell her to look for companies with older people in them. They often have kids, and treat a job as a job -- you come, work, and leave -- rather than the entirety of their existence. I don't have kids, but I find myself much happier when the median coworker does.
If you're in a supportive environment where freedom of thought and debate are allowed, then no, people aren't usually against you just because of the ideas you hold.
> I don’t need to change to fit within my industry. My industry needs to change to make everyone feel included and accepted.
Moreover, articles that "don't try to further an agenda" are often furthering and normalizing the status-quo.