The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
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I feel like you were on the right track with
There are two cases to consider: when there is an actual immediate decision process at stake (that you can influence!), and when there isn't.
Let's consider the easier, latter case: there is nothing at stake, so this is a pure signalling exercise. Arguing about politics, and virtue signalling (for whatever set of virtues you may ascribe to) is almost never perceived charitably. It's at best quietly sanctimonious and at worst autistically obnoxious. It has value in in-group bond strengthening/groupthink signalling, not as an invitation for an actual reflection or discussion. When someone of a different faith than you discusses religion, do you "diplomatically" argue about their beliefs? Life isn't a college debate club, try to find things you might have in common instead of rehashing things that "trigger" you.
Now the harder instance, you're influencing a decision process (i.e., are sitting on a hiring committee). Here, you need to weigh the cost of revealing outsider political predilections (and becoming a pariah, especially in groupthink heavy environments like academia) against the damage to the decision process. Are you overlooking a once-in-a-lifetime candidate just to fill a diversity quota? That might pose sufficient institutional risk that it is worth speaking up. Thankfully, in such instances, there are compelling non-political arguments in favor of your position ("I'm not anti-diversity, the non-diverse candidate just happens to be vastly superior, and we'd be fools to pass them up").
Choose your battles. The best thing to do in an environment where they are "firing white people to bring in a minority" is probably leave. An environment that espouses beliefs that are antithetical to your values is probably a) somewhere you don't what to be contributing to and b) a profound waste of emotional energy that could be better spent elsewhere.
How to fight for what you believe in then? Associate and discuss your positions with like-minded people. Build circles you'd want to be a part of. Don't berate your waiter because they corrected you on a pronoun, in the same way you don't argue with Jehovah's witnesses or telemarketers.
Perhaps worth postfacing this with an apocryphal Twain quote:
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