It's not. And this is where I think we fundamentally disagree. I do research to scratch an itch. GPU goes brrr. It may or may not help the community. I'm doing it to amuse myself. I hope that it also amuses others.
Why do you think you deserve access to public research dollars to scratch you personal research itch? If you can't explain to taxpayers how your research impacts them, I think it's fair that they should deny you their money.
Because every invention has been someone's personal itch. That's how the invention business works. From academia to VC, you fund a bunch of ideas and some of them change the world. Diversity statements don't play any part in this process.
