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I'm just speaking for myself, but in terms of the open-source projects I have been a part of, communication either happens over a mailing list, or a discourse f

by skohan 6y ago

I'm just speaking for myself, but in terms of the open-source projects I have been a part of, communication either happens over a mailing list, or a discourse forum. A lot of the time you only know the people you're interacting with as a screen name, so you don't even know their race or gender. And 100% of the content of the discussion is either purely technical in nature (e.g. how do I use this API feature, what JSON structure is expected etc) or is something operational like the timelines and priorities of the project. It's just hard to imagine how racism or sexism would enter into to a community like this because the race and sex of the participants is not known, and you're not even discussing races or genders at all, heck you're generally not discussing people at all.

wrsh07 6y ago
That fact that it's hard for you to imagine just means your imagination isn't very good It happens. People leave tech communities because of it. I don't know what else to tell you. I've provided citations to this effect in a bunch of other comments. It's important to note, though, that people can do or say racist or sexist things without targeting it at someone. That would still impact someone's decision to stay in the community, even if the person who said it didn't mean to offend them.