Most "engineering-types" would probably feel the exact same way if they were asked to join the sales team at their company. Talk about culture shock...
> as the only African American on her team, she didn’t feel she had much in common with her colleagues.
I'm a white guy. If I go to lunch with a bunch of manager or sales guys, and they start talking about sports, I'm going to have exact same problem. I don't give two shits about sports, and I think spectator sports are incredibly stupid. So if I find myself in a group of sports fans, then I'm also going to feel that I don't have much in common with these people. Does that mean they're a bunch of racists? Obviously not; we simply don't share the same culture. If the conversation shifts to technology, or sci-fi, or Game of Thrones (a lot of people are into that these days), etc., then I'll be able to join in, but if the sports fans aren't into talking about that stuff over lunch, then I'm out of luck. I'm not going to whine much about it, except maybe for making some snide remarks about how stupid sports fans are, but I'm certainly not going to go on a crusade about it.
Luckily, I usually get along pretty well with coworkers this way, but I guess engineers tend not to be sports fanatics as much as the general population. But I certainly have found myself in situations with groups of people with very different interests than myself. I didn't make a big deal out of it; I know that my interests are a little more narrow and that I eschew many things that regular people like (sports, popular TV shows aside from GoT), so I try to find people I do share interests with.
Why should we expect "diversity" to have an appended, "as long as I'm comfortable with that"? Why do we struggle so much with what's "normative"? Why not treat this as an adventure, something unexpected and unknown to explore?
Another aspect of this is that, I think people want to feel like they are part of the team, working together towards a common goal. If what bonds the team are the things they like or dislike, that's a pretty weak team. Shouldn't the common goal that binds the team together be the product or features the are working on? Isn't that the point of company culture -- not to homogenize everyone, but to gel the team? (See: http://the-programmers-stone.com/ )
This doesn't mean that the minority person can't ask, "hey, does anyone follow XYZ?". He might be surprised. But if not, don't expect everyone to have or feign an interest.
And surely, in a team of technologists, they can find something that they're all interested in and can talk about. Maybe something to do with, oh, I don't know, maybe technology? I have conversations at work all the time like that (luckily I work with some really smart people at my current job), about future trends in tech, etc. But I've worked with some dullards in the past, and I didn't get butt-hurt that they didn't want to talk about sci-fi or whatever.
You don't have enough data on other people around you, or even how they view the world, or feel about the world. It's like taking a wild-ass guess, and being proud of it.
I don't really care much for following sports teams either. I used to turn my nose at it, as if I am somehow a superior person for not giving two shits about who is winning. One day, I read Michael Lewis's Moneyball and flipped through Blindside and realized I had been an idiot. I still might not care about which team is winning, yet there are a lot of hidden depths to sports. How many other things have I missed by not looking with an open mind?
It really doesn't matter. My whole point, which you seem to have missed, is that people have preferences. I don't give a shit about sports. I don't care about its hidden depths. I have the right to my opinion, and to turn my nose up at sports, just like the sports fan has the right to turn his nose up at sci-fi. Are you going to chastise him for not being open-minded and spending a bunch of time watching sci-fi movies he has no interest in and then being able to discuss them intelligently with coworkers?
The simple fact is that different people have different tastes and interests. If someone wants to be curious and try learning about something different, then great. If they've already given that thing a chance, or taken a quick look and decided it's not for them, there is nothing wrong with that. If that means that they feel "left out" when talking to coworkers, too bad. That's a natural byproduct of people having different interests. It doesn't need to be "fixed".
Basically, what you're doing is telling minorities that they need to take an active interest in things that the majority (meaning white people here) are interested in so that they can fit in better. That sounds rather condescending to me honestly. I used sports here as an analogy to point out that this isn't a racial issue, we only see it here because different demographics tend to have different interests because of their different upbringings and environments. No one makes an issue out of white northeasterners not being interested in gun shooting and muddin'.