I agree that diversity shouldn’t come at the expense of something else or dilute the quality of the finished product. I’m just having a hard time thinking of when that has ever happened.
When something like Dragon Age or Star Wars fails to meet expectations lots of people seem very eager to blame diversity, but there is so much else that is wrong with those products that I don’t think less consideration for inclusivity would have made a difference.
On the other hand, I can think of times when diversity for diversity’s sake actually resulted in great quality products.
One time Donald Glover said that he wanted to play Spider-Man. The internet reacted predictably, with lots of consternation about forced diversity and even some death threats for Glover. Brian Michael Bendis caught wind of this, asked himself “why can’t Spider-Man be black?” and then decided to replace Ultimate Peter Parker with Miles Morales. Some years later, Into The Spiderverse comes out and is a critical and commercial darling, widely considered not only one of the best Spider-Man movies of all time, but one of the best comic movies of all time. All thanks to diversity for diversity’s sake.
