I saw a lot of news recently that tech companies put a lot of efforts to find technical talents that are different in something from who's working for particular employer - e.g. Google tries to hire more women, people with non-straight sexual orientation, African Americans and so on and so forth.
I also witnessed top level managers of the biggest IT companies making public statements about making efforts in hope to make employee population more diverse.
And I'm honestly curious on why is this happening?
Is this because they are penalized for having employee contingency which is not diverse enough?
What if it is extremely hard to find someone who meets the bar in the particular group - do they (big tech companies) hire no matter what, just to meet the ratio showing better diversity?
Or is this because there is a scientific study showing that if every race, gender, (put your aspect here) is different then teams become more capable? I did a quick search but didn't find a reliable information on the subject matter.
And I'm sorry in advance if someone sees this question as arrogant or provocative - I honestly didn't mean it. I am not originally from the USA. The difference is striking for me as employers in my home country are not claiming about hiring people with the other color of skin (at the same time I'm certain that they will hire anyone who meets technical bar and just a good-natured enough to work with).
UPDATE:
My question was put on hold because being too broad and I guess one way to narrow its scope is to ask what is the motivation behind strategic decisions of major IT players to make employee population more diverse.
I think it is pretty clear from the answers that I've got - and one of the key factors is to make workplace atmosphere friendlier as people will get more and more tolerable to each other - I really hope that eventually it will come true and we will all discover ourselves in a better, friendlier society.
I also agree with one opinion below that implementation of this goal is sometimes far from ideal as people still introduce groups that are close to the members outside their circle and IMO only hinders progress toward their goal (e.g. LGBT at Google, Women in Engineering, etc.) I can imagine what will happen if someone create a group like 'Young White Male Naturals in Engineering'.