I think I know what you're talking about. I've seen teams where everyone tries to look exactly the same way and is expected to have exactly the same interests and hobbies. That usually ends up being quite toxic and demotivating.
The trouble is - once the company starts setting quotas and special rules for enforcing diversity, it attracts the type of people that focus on gaming those rules instead of bringing in added value and this quickly creates another form of toxicity.
In my opinion the ideal work environment is somewhere between those 2 extremes.
Human nature really. The moment you transition from applying common sense to a formal set of rules, there are always some people ready to abuse it. One of the well-known historical anecdote would be the cobra effect [1], I guess.
A more recent example is how whiteboard programming questions during interviews turned out to be ineffective because it indicated how well a candidate rehearsed this type of questions, rather than their programming abilities.
The whiteboard thing is different. Candidates of all backgrounds can practice that and thus make it less effective as a tool to filter out bad applicants. But diversity quotas, for example, are harder to game because most people can't change much about themselves to meet diversity criteria. So instead you are presumably talking about people who use their background to get an advantage in the hiring process and end up in roles a role for which they are not competent. But this is also fuzzy, because if the company is seeking diversity, why shouldn't people apply and let the company decide if their skills are sufficient? How are they "gaming" something by showing up and being hired? That's a failing of the company, not the candidate.
The trouble is - once the company starts setting quotas and special rules for enforcing diversity, it attracts the type of people that focus on gaming those rules instead of bringing in added value and this quickly creates another form of toxicity.
In my opinion the ideal work environment is somewhere between those 2 extremes.