“But when cultural representation of diversity becomes an end in itself, then it becomes meaningless, a box-ticking exercise that distracts from exploring what stories we want to tell and why.”
It’s worse than meaningless, it’s blatant racism and sexism. If they were to consider many actors for the role and find a black woman was just the absolute best choice, that would be one thing. However, to demand a black woman get the part because of those attributes alone is to judge people only by those attributes, and to judge people only by the attributes of race and sex is the definition of racist and sexist.
Dead-on.