If you are white or a man, that pretty much is why they exist.

I work at a university, and every year I have to sit through a 2 hour training seminar that is half diversity training and half sexual harassment training. Now I'm opposed to discrimination and sexual harassment, but that's not really what it's about, at least not in the traditional sense.

First of all, they say that white people can be discriminated against too and that men can be harassed too, but every single hypothetical example they give over the whole two hour long session is a white person discriminating or a man sexually harassing. Secondly, they really drive the point home that intent does not matter nor does the offense being real even really matter much. It's all about perception. If a person even perceives that I've discriminated against them or harassed them, then the investigation starts which kicks into effect certain rules about what I can and can't do (I can't treat them any different than anyone else, even after the investigation is over and even if they rule in my favor, and the "treating differently" is set to the same perception standard so the different treatment doesn't actually have to occur in reality), and I am bound to their decision. If they rule in the person's favor then I will be disciplined, up to termination. If they rule in my favor, then nothing happens even if they find that the complaint was made up. There is no penalty for false complaints because nobody can definitely say whether the person actually perceived it or not, and perception is all that matters. In fact, repeated complaints against me is seen as evidence of a pattern of behavior on my part, not as evidence that maybe the person is just making it up. The whole training basically consists of one half telling me the ways I could screw up, even if accidental or purely in the victim's mind, while the other half is telling me how they will investigate and punish me for that screw up.

I get what a diversity officer is supposed to do, but in practice, they really do seem to exist just to make a person's life difficult if they are white, a male, or heaven forbid a white male.