> Grouping South and East Asians seems pretty silly to me.

Agreed 100%.

Honestly, even lumping all South Asians together and all East Asians together is pretty silly and obscures a lot of cultural, linguistic, socioeconomic, etc. differences that are hugely important when talking about "diversity".

Let's not forget that literally over half the world's population is South Asian or East Asian[0]. It'd be ridiculous not to assume that these are incredibly heterogeneous groups that can't be all bucketed under the same category, but sadly, that's what people generally do.

[0] Before someone points out that "Asians" are a smaller percentage of the US population - yes, but that misses the point. These group definitions are arbitrary (and have changed greatly over the years). If we're going to talk about racial and ethnic origin as a component of diversity, we can't gerrymander the group definitions unless our actual goal is to artificially inflate metrics on diversity.

I agree. I probably phrased myself poorly. My point is that the continued drive for diversity is aimed at making the tech sector more closely resemble America's population as a whole. If every ethnicity but African Americans were represented, there would still be a drive for more diversity because a group is being left out.

And also grouping first generation immigrants with native born Americans of south and east Asian ancestry.

We're living in the social construct that we constructed socially over hundreds of years.