4 ms·

That's not what they're saying. What they're saying is: "We reached out to the best, and it turns out that the ones who accepted our offer were white males. Pe

by GuiA 14y ago

That's not what they're saying. What they're saying is: "We reached out to the best, and it turns out that the ones who accepted our offer were white males. People complained about that; but we don't want to go out of our way to find a non white male just to tick a box".

danso 14y ago
I wish for the OP's sake that they had included examples of non-white people they asked to attend (but who apparently couldn't make it). It'd at least give a little more insight to who they think is a good panelist. But turning the detractors' argument from "Hey, there's just white guys on this panel!" to "Hey, please include a minority so that no one's feelings are hurt" was probably the least useful way to counter the detractors.
rhizome 14y ago
To be sure, they don't say who they reached out to.
fatbird 14y ago
we don't want to go out of our way to find a non white male just to tick a box See, they should have gone out of their way to do this. Not just to tick a box, but because ticking that box is a kind of due diligence towards building a more inclusive community. Unless they're ready to claim that there's no interesting non-white, non-male speakers able or willing to speak at their conference, then the failure is theirs to make any effort at all. But if they did make the effort and failed to attract someone, then they can say "we actually tried, and couldn't do it." The effort need be no more than to send a bunch of emails, and if that fails, it demonstrates a deeper problem in their community than they can fix.
juridatenshi 14y ago
I'm kind of skeptical that they even tried to reach out to diverse people. For example, Keavy McMinn indicated on twitter they never asked her. She's a very well known and liked speaker in the Ruby community and lives relatively close by. If you largely reach out to white guys, of course that's who you'll end up with.
- FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
  I'm not sure I like this argument. Because one woman (who from your comment I presume everyone should know about - I don't know her) said they were never approached, this means the organisers intentionally selected (using your words) 'non-diverse' people?
  - juridatenshi 14y ago
    Their argument was that there were only white guys available from the list of popular ruby presenters. I'm saying they may not have tried very hard to reach out if they didn't even ask a closeby popular presenter (yet they asked a ton of white guys from the US). There were others that also weren't approached - I mentioned Keavy specifically because she spoke about it publicly.
matthewowen 14y ago
I said 'of this form'. They didn't say it literally, but look at the values implied by their claim. Why don't they quantify who 'the best' that they reached out to where? Here's my point: frequently, people say 'the best people just happen to be white males' or 'we can only hire white males'. In reality, this is often because there's been no effort made to reach out to other segments of society. The tokenism excuse is then deployed - but that isn't the point. No-one likes tokenism. The argument we're making is that there are talented people who get overlooked or are made to feel excluded (often accidentally) because they aren't white men. I find it incredibly offensive when people deploy the tokenism argument against this criticism because the implicit claim is that there aren't enough talented members of minority groups. This isn't the case. Moreover, it's part of the continuous passing the buck you see in sectors like tech. Businesses say they don't hire more women because there aren't many women with CompSci degrees. CompSci programs say they don't get more women because women aren't interested. And yet companies and faculties are still willing to have woman-unfriendly cultures, because women don't want to work there. To be specific to conferences - if every conference says "we reached out to good speakers but there weren't many women" then there never will be - because women won't get their shot. To be fair, I don't know the specifics. Maybe this conference did make efforts. But given that they haven't quantified what effort they did make, their defence is extremely weak.

by GuiA 14y ago

danso 14y ago

I wish for the OP's sake that they had included examples of non-white people they asked to attend (but who apparently couldn't make it). It'd at least give a little more insight to who they think is a good panelist. But turning the detractors' argument from "Hey, there's just white guys on this panel!" to "Hey, please include a minority so that no one's feelings are hurt" was probably the least useful way to counter the detractors.

rhizome 14y ago

To be sure, they don't say who they reached out to.

fatbird 14y ago

we don't want to go out of our way to find a non white male just to tick a box See, they should have gone out of their way to do this. Not just to tick a box, but because ticking that box is a kind of due diligence towards building a more inclusive community. Unless they're ready to claim that there's no interesting non-white, non-male speakers able or willing to speak at their conference, then the failure is theirs to make any effort at all. But if they did make the effort and failed to attract someone, then they can say "we actually tried, and couldn't do it." The effort need be no more than to send a bunch of emails, and if that fails, it demonstrates a deeper problem in their community than they can fix.

juridatenshi 14y ago

I'm kind of skeptical that they even tried to reach out to diverse people. For example, Keavy McMinn indicated on twitter they never asked her. She's a very well known and liked speaker in the Ruby community and lives relatively close by. If you largely reach out to white guys, of course that's who you'll end up with.

FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
I'm not sure I like this argument. Because one woman (who from your comment I presume everyone should know about - I don't know her) said they were never approached, this means the organisers intentionally selected (using your words) 'non-diverse' people?
- juridatenshi 14y ago
  Their argument was that there were only white guys available from the list of popular ruby presenters. I'm saying they may not have tried very hard to reach out if they didn't even ask a closeby popular presenter (yet they asked a ton of white guys from the US). There were others that also weren't approached - I mentioned Keavy specifically because she spoke about it publicly.

matthewowen 14y ago

I said 'of this form'. They didn't say it literally, but look at the values implied by their claim. Why don't they quantify who 'the best' that they reached out to where? Here's my point: frequently, people say 'the best people just happen to be white males' or 'we can only hire white males'. In reality, this is often because there's been no effort made to reach out to other segments of society. The tokenism excuse is then deployed - but that isn't the point. No-one likes tokenism. The argument we're making is that there are talented people who get overlooked or are made to feel excluded (often accidentally) because they aren't white men. I find it incredibly offensive when people deploy the tokenism argument against this criticism because the implicit claim is that there aren't enough talented members of minority groups. This isn't the case. Moreover, it's part of the continuous passing the buck you see in sectors like tech. Businesses say they don't hire more women because there aren't many women with CompSci degrees. CompSci programs say they don't get more women because women aren't interested. And yet companies and faculties are still willing to have woman-unfriendly cultures, because women don't want to work there. To be specific to conferences - if every conference says "we reached out to good speakers but there weren't many women" then there never will be - because women won't get their shot. To be fair, I don't know the specifics. Maybe this conference did make efforts. But given that they haven't quantified what effort they did make, their defence is extremely weak.