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Hey white dudes. I see you're pretty worked up. Non-white dude here to explain. When you're white, and you're male, technology (as a career field) is pretty ac
by danilocampos 14y ago
Hey white dudes. I see you're pretty worked up. Non-white dude here to explain.
When you're white, and you're male, technology (as a career field) is pretty accessible. And here's why. You can open up a newspaper or a tech blog or whatever, and many of the major important people in the photos staring back at you basically look like you. And that's nice, because you can be reassured that someone with your background and origins has a place in technology.
If you're not male, or not white, you have to look a bit harder. Sometimes a lot harder, indeed, to find people who both look like you and are doing what you want to be doing professionally.
Now, you'll give me an argument that looks just shouldn't matter. That we should look at people's minds and ideas, not their skin color, in evaluating their contributions.
And while I'm sure such an ideal feels reassuring – it's bunk in this context.
Diversity of "race" is really a proxy for diversity of background, experience and origins. For maximizing the varieties of life story represented.
It's useful to do this because diversity of experience leads to diversity of solutions. Diversity also breeds further diversity, as people with wildly different backgrounds feel more welcome into the fold.
So when we see people helping to lead a community, and some of those people aren't like the majority, that's encouraging. It says that even though a given person is "different" from the norm, they are welcome, they may be successful.
Star Trek is lauded for this reason. Actor Nichelle Nichols was thinking of leaving the show. None other than Dr. Martin Luther King implored her to remain – he believed a black professional woman on television would be a crucial role model for young people. (In her childhood, Whoopi Goldberg is said to have screamed, "Hey Mom! Look! There's a black woman on the TV and she ain't no maid!")
And you may argue, well, why should diversity matter? Let some people do some stuff and other people do others. And I'll tell you that position, on top of being lazy, opens us up to many missed opportunities. In technology, we want as many different sorts of humans as possible all working on our hard problems. If STEM is a country club for white guys, that leaves out a huge chunk of the population who might otherwise make great contributions.
One last thing. When you say stuff like "Wull, shucks, what were they supposed to do? Find a token [non-white-male] to fill the spot?" you make it sound like you don't believe there are any people but white guys with useful things to say on the subject of the conference. Careful with that.
- Camillo 14y agoThe barrier to entry to becoming a Ruby programmer is as low as can be: all you need is a laptop and internet access. You can become a celebrity without people even knowing your name, let alone your face: why_ (or _why or whatever) was at one point the biggest name in Ruby (AFAICT from outside), and he might have been a cat with a keyboard for all anyone knew. On top of that, there's plenty of famous and powerful non-white engineers. And if you don't want to look at the top, look at your peers: in my university in America, whites are the minority in most gradute CS classes. By all objective measures, this is the last industry where people should be subject to a witch-hunt and have their conference cancelled because of their speaker lineup.
- danso 14y agoThey didn't "have their conference cancelled". They cancelled it because they felt pressure from their sponsors. Without more example or explanation, we have to take them at their word that the pressure was on level with a witch-hunt. If that's the case, that is indeed a poor state of affairs in terms of open debate and civility.
- MrKurtHaeusler 14y agoIf I organised a conference, and failed to attract a single female speaker, especially in a community where sexism is a sensitive issue, I would immediately decide to cancel it of my own volition. I don't want to contribute to the type of things that make women feel excluded.
- Evbn 14y agoSo if women choose not to be included on your activity, you would cancel it, because women would feel excluded? OK.... If I never took part in anything that didn't attract females (that were not family), I would have never learned anything, or seen any movies, or eaten any food...
- Kaworu 14y ago