10 ms·

BritRuby cancelled due to a lack of racial and gender diversity

22 points by Peroni 14y ago

Peroni 14y ago
BritRuby announcement: http://2013.britruby.com/ http://2013.britruby.com/
- thedudemabry 14y ago
  This is definitely an interesting development. While I'm saddened to see a Ruby conference canceled with a full roster of qualified speakers, I'm happier to see the pendulum on this side of perfect balance than the alternative. This problem has clearer and more positive strategies than its opposite. Edit: Whoa. I did more than 10 seconds of research and this situation is more fucked than I snap-judged. My heart goes out to the organizers. A very reasonable twitter debate was mistaken for scandal and outrage and shut down any chance of building a diverse and interesting conference. This was not the right time to take action.
  - Peroni 14y ago
    I sincerely don't believe cancelling was the right choice. There were 5 speaker slots left to be filled with a December deadline to fill those slots. Why not use the controversy to attract appropriately diverse speakers with interesting and relevant proposals?
    - relix 14y ago
      Sponsors pulled out because of the controversy, the contract for the venue had to be signed and the organizers weren't sure they could find more sponsors to fullfil the financial obligations. There weren't many options left but to cancel.
      - Peroni 14y ago
        This is the bit that intrigues me. The organisation I work for were one of the primary sponsors for the event. We saw the controversy and simply assumed the BritRuby team could handle it. At no point did we threaten or even allude to the possibility of withdrawing our funding. To make matters worse, had we been aware that the event was at risk due to a lack of funds we could have considered stepping in and increasing our sponsorship. Unfortunately, the first we heard about the cancellation was via twitter.
      - jdee 14y ago
        I'd really like to know exactly which sponsors pulled out because of this. Between the first tweet and the announcement of cancellation there seemed to be only 9 tweets of criticism: https://gist.github.com/4108671 https://gist.github.com/4108671 . Seems a bit rash.
        Peroni 14y ago
        That makes two of us. Two known sponsors: Globaldev (the company I work for) & OnTheBeach.co.uk Globaldev's take on the situation: https://twitter.com/globaldev/status/270452743733379072 https://twitter.com/globaldev/status/270452743733379072 OnTheBeach's take: https://twitter.com/SwitchJam/status/270261834991407104 https://twitter.com/SwitchJam/status/270261834991407104
    - Lapsa 14y ago
      e.g. albino penguin talking about nuances of rails middleware :)
  - coolestuk 14y ago
    This shambles could only happen in Britain. Senior politicians get accused of being paedophiles by journalists with no evidence. Politicians routinely steal from public coffers, and don't even lose their place in Parliament (even though some were sent to prison). The country is awash with video surveillance, yet trying to get the police to respond to a crime report is like swimming upstream. A christian preacher who said "Homosexuals are deserving of the wrath of God – and so are all other sinners – and they are going to a place called hell" received a £1000 fine and a criminal conviction. Indian sikhs who criticise Indian muslims are accused of being racists. Political correctness had taken hold in local government by the early 1980s. Practically every interaction with them requires you to tell them your race, gender and sexual preference. The place is a mad-house.
    - rmc 14y ago
      Political Correctness is great if you are a minority. It means you have similar rights to the powerful group. As a gay man, I know I can mention the gender of my spouse (male!) in a workplace environment without being worried about being fired (for example). Straight people have always (more or less) been able to mention their spouse in the workplace without fear of repercussion. Now I can too! Political Correctness means I don't have to watch every word I say in the office! It's done wonders for my freedom of speech. The most ardent opponents are those who hate gay people or black people and want to continue to shout vile things without repuccision.
      - mseebach2 14y ago
        That's not political correctness, that's anti-discrimination. Political correctness is "Seasons Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas" for fear of offending non-Christians. It's idiotic because for those not celebrating Christmas, indeed those that might be offended by mentions of Christmas, there is no season to celebrate. Don't send them a card. "Seasons greetings" is not "culture neutral", it's a code for Christmas. Pretending people are too stupid to figure out why suddenly people are eager to wish them a particular great third week of December is very offensive, IMO.
        14y ago
Aardwolf 14y ago
Why didn't they just keep the subject at Ruby? People who are interested in Ruby would have come. Why does it matter what race or gender these people are?
obstacle1 14y ago
Out of curiosity, why are the complainers in this case not being called out for their own racism/discrimination? The fact that a panel consists of white males, straight males, or purple elephants is not in itself evidence of discrimination. It is entirely possible that these were the most qualified of all applicants to have submitted to this conference. Without knowing the details of the applicant pool, anyone screaming "racism! sexism! rape culture! etc!" is not fighting for a worthy cause, but being destructive and hysterical. I hope that historically status quo groups get over the guilt and act in the right going forward. The goal of a technical presentation should not be to filter speakers via quota into race and sexuality; it should be to discuss technical things.
- unconed 14y ago
  Indeed: http://unicornfree.com/2010/all-schnitzelconf-speakers-are-male-white-have-that-flippy-do/ http://unicornfree.com/2010/all-schnitzelconf-speakers-are-m...
- rmc 14y ago
  There are several definitions of racism, one is essentially "making references to someone's race and implying everyone in that group is the same (in some attribute)", or more simply "anything based on race". Lots of people like this definition because it's a nice, simple and objective defintion and it means black people in the UK can be racist to white people, or that affirmative action is racist. I think this is the definition you're using. There's another definition, which is that racist actions are actions that's designed to maintain & reinforce the institutionalised power structure among races. Right now, if modern UK life was a video game, "white male" would be an easier difficulty level than "black male". There are statistically less problems for the "white male" group. Racist actions is talk that re-enforced that imbalance, and attempts to undo the power imbalance is not racist. This definition is harder for some people to accept because it means that you need to look at yourself and think about what power imbalances you might be benefiting from, and it means that affirmative action is not racist, and attempts to stop is could be construed as racist (since stopping affirmative action can re-enforce power imbalances). This is the definition I use. So no, complaining about the lack of non-white people is not racist.
tomwalker 14y ago
The real losers are those that just wanted to go to a conference to talk about Ruby.
longtimelistner 14y ago
I guess it was bound to happen. Does anyone know if it's real or not : http://awmconf.github.com/ http://awmconf.github.com/
SeanDav 14y ago
This kind of reminds me about affirmative action. This is an oxymoronic action where people attempt to reverse race/religious/sexual discrimination effects by discriminating by race/religion/sex, but in a "positive" way. This can even apply where no discrimination was intended until the do-gooders come along and attempt to apply their own reality distortion fields to a situation.
josteink 14y ago
Minority/Majority are only terms which makes sense in a specific context. This context can be gender, can be race, can be nationality, age, experience, school of thought, sexual orientation, preference in food, preference in code-editor etc. If you find yourself in a "minority", it's because you have chosen to identify yourself with something which puts you on the outside. People calling for discrimination in cases like this often have chosen to identify themselves with a metric which puts them in the minority (race, gender) instead of one which wouldn't (nationality, age, experience, school of thought, etc). To me it seems like a personal, deliberate choice to weight your identity in on things which are not important to the subject instead of those which are. And I find it hard to sympathize with. You're not suffering. You're not living under South African apartheid rule. You are not being oppressed. In fact, you are using your freedom, which you do have, to cause a shitfest over statistical anomalies or tendencies. Cry me a river.
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  Do you get dizzy screaming at the ants from atop your pedestal?
- rmc 14y ago
  You're not living under South African apartheid rule. You are not being oppressed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country
jinushaun 14y ago
Lame. Anti-white racism is still racism. Growing up colored in the US, I encounter anti-white racism all the time among my peers, but never once received racism against my skin color from whites.
- rubydriver 14y ago
  How interesting I grew up colored in the US also and experience racism everyday from white people. Please let me know which part of the US you are living in. I would love to live there and not have to worry about people giving me a hard time because of the color of my skin.
drbig 14y ago
Ehh... I thought that 'diversity' means we give everyone equal opportunities and treat them the same way. Now it seems it means 'we need to have this particular distribution of genders and races'. Utter stupidity, from one extreme straight to the other :( Isn't it really obvious that different topics inherently attract different audiences, and as long as we give everyone equal chances to participate we are okay?
- lutusp 14y ago
  > I thought that 'diversity' means we give everyone equal opportunities and treat them the same way. No, that's survival of the fittest. Giving everyone equal opportunity and being blind to everything else is how nature does it. It's called evolution. "Diversity" is a code word for increasing the number of participants over what natural forces would allow for, if the best and the brightest were to be the only selection criterion. Having said that, there is a point to diversity -- it hopes to address prejudicial forces that prevent everyone from having an equal opportunity to show what they're made of. But "diversity" means exactly the opposite of what you seem to think. The point of diversity is to maximize variety, not competence. But it can often lead to a good outcome.

22 points by Peroni 14y ago

Peroni 14y ago

BritRuby announcement: http://2013.britruby.com/ http://2013.britruby.com/

thedudemabry 14y ago
This is definitely an interesting development. While I'm saddened to see a Ruby conference canceled with a full roster of qualified speakers, I'm happier to see the pendulum on this side of perfect balance than the alternative. This problem has clearer and more positive strategies than its opposite. Edit: Whoa. I did more than 10 seconds of research and this situation is more fucked than I snap-judged. My heart goes out to the organizers. A very reasonable twitter debate was mistaken for scandal and outrage and shut down any chance of building a diverse and interesting conference. This was not the right time to take action.
- Peroni 14y ago
  I sincerely don't believe cancelling was the right choice. There were 5 speaker slots left to be filled with a December deadline to fill those slots. Why not use the controversy to attract appropriately diverse speakers with interesting and relevant proposals?
  - relix 14y ago
    Sponsors pulled out because of the controversy, the contract for the venue had to be signed and the organizers weren't sure they could find more sponsors to fullfil the financial obligations. There weren't many options left but to cancel.
    - Peroni 14y ago
      This is the bit that intrigues me. The organisation I work for were one of the primary sponsors for the event. We saw the controversy and simply assumed the BritRuby team could handle it. At no point did we threaten or even allude to the possibility of withdrawing our funding. To make matters worse, had we been aware that the event was at risk due to a lack of funds we could have considered stepping in and increasing our sponsorship. Unfortunately, the first we heard about the cancellation was via twitter.
    - jdee 14y ago
      I'd really like to know exactly which sponsors pulled out because of this. Between the first tweet and the announcement of cancellation there seemed to be only 9 tweets of criticism: https://gist.github.com/4108671 https://gist.github.com/4108671 . Seems a bit rash.
      - Peroni 14y ago
        That makes two of us. Two known sponsors: Globaldev (the company I work for) & OnTheBeach.co.uk Globaldev's take on the situation: https://twitter.com/globaldev/status/270452743733379072 https://twitter.com/globaldev/status/270452743733379072 OnTheBeach's take: https://twitter.com/SwitchJam/status/270261834991407104 https://twitter.com/SwitchJam/status/270261834991407104
  - Lapsa 14y ago
    e.g. albino penguin talking about nuances of rails middleware :)
- coolestuk 14y ago
  This shambles could only happen in Britain. Senior politicians get accused of being paedophiles by journalists with no evidence. Politicians routinely steal from public coffers, and don't even lose their place in Parliament (even though some were sent to prison). The country is awash with video surveillance, yet trying to get the police to respond to a crime report is like swimming upstream. A christian preacher who said "Homosexuals are deserving of the wrath of God – and so are all other sinners – and they are going to a place called hell" received a £1000 fine and a criminal conviction. Indian sikhs who criticise Indian muslims are accused of being racists. Political correctness had taken hold in local government by the early 1980s. Practically every interaction with them requires you to tell them your race, gender and sexual preference. The place is a mad-house.
  - rmc 14y ago
    Political Correctness is great if you are a minority. It means you have similar rights to the powerful group. As a gay man, I know I can mention the gender of my spouse (male!) in a workplace environment without being worried about being fired (for example). Straight people have always (more or less) been able to mention their spouse in the workplace without fear of repercussion. Now I can too! Political Correctness means I don't have to watch every word I say in the office! It's done wonders for my freedom of speech. The most ardent opponents are those who hate gay people or black people and want to continue to shout vile things without repuccision.
    - mseebach2 14y ago
      That's not political correctness, that's anti-discrimination. Political correctness is "Seasons Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas" for fear of offending non-Christians. It's idiotic because for those not celebrating Christmas, indeed those that might be offended by mentions of Christmas, there is no season to celebrate. Don't send them a card. "Seasons greetings" is not "culture neutral", it's a code for Christmas. Pretending people are too stupid to figure out why suddenly people are eager to wish them a particular great third week of December is very offensive, IMO.
      - 14y ago

Aardwolf 14y ago

Why didn't they just keep the subject at Ruby? People who are interested in Ruby would have come. Why does it matter what race or gender these people are?

obstacle1 14y ago

Out of curiosity, why are the complainers in this case not being called out for their own racism/discrimination? The fact that a panel consists of white males, straight males, or purple elephants is not in itself evidence of discrimination. It is entirely possible that these were the most qualified of all applicants to have submitted to this conference. Without knowing the details of the applicant pool, anyone screaming "racism! sexism! rape culture! etc!" is not fighting for a worthy cause, but being destructive and hysterical. I hope that historically status quo groups get over the guilt and act in the right going forward. The goal of a technical presentation should not be to filter speakers via quota into race and sexuality; it should be to discuss technical things.

unconed 14y ago
Indeed: http://unicornfree.com/2010/all-schnitzelconf-speakers-are-male-white-have-that-flippy-do/ http://unicornfree.com/2010/all-schnitzelconf-speakers-are-m...
rmc 14y ago
There are several definitions of racism, one is essentially "making references to someone's race and implying everyone in that group is the same (in some attribute)", or more simply "anything based on race". Lots of people like this definition because it's a nice, simple and objective defintion and it means black people in the UK can be racist to white people, or that affirmative action is racist. I think this is the definition you're using. There's another definition, which is that racist actions are actions that's designed to maintain & reinforce the institutionalised power structure among races. Right now, if modern UK life was a video game, "white male" would be an easier difficulty level than "black male". There are statistically less problems for the "white male" group. Racist actions is talk that re-enforced that imbalance, and attempts to undo the power imbalance is not racist. This definition is harder for some people to accept because it means that you need to look at yourself and think about what power imbalances you might be benefiting from, and it means that affirmative action is not racist, and attempts to stop is could be construed as racist (since stopping affirmative action can re-enforce power imbalances). This is the definition I use. So no, complaining about the lack of non-white people is not racist.

tomwalker 14y ago

The real losers are those that just wanted to go to a conference to talk about Ruby.

longtimelistner 14y ago

I guess it was bound to happen. Does anyone know if it's real or not : http://awmconf.github.com/ http://awmconf.github.com/

SeanDav 14y ago

This kind of reminds me about affirmative action. This is an oxymoronic action where people attempt to reverse race/religious/sexual discrimination effects by discriminating by race/religion/sex, but in a "positive" way. This can even apply where no discrimination was intended until the do-gooders come along and attempt to apply their own reality distortion fields to a situation.

josteink 14y ago

Minority/Majority are only terms which makes sense in a specific context. This context can be gender, can be race, can be nationality, age, experience, school of thought, sexual orientation, preference in food, preference in code-editor etc. If you find yourself in a "minority", it's because you have chosen to identify yourself with something which puts you on the outside. People calling for discrimination in cases like this often have chosen to identify themselves with a metric which puts them in the minority (race, gender) instead of one which wouldn't (nationality, age, experience, school of thought, etc). To me it seems like a personal, deliberate choice to weight your identity in on things which are not important to the subject instead of those which are. And I find it hard to sympathize with. You're not suffering. You're not living under South African apartheid rule. You are not being oppressed. In fact, you are using your freedom, which you do have, to cause a shitfest over statistical anomalies or tendencies. Cry me a river.

mkr-hn 14y ago
Do you get dizzy screaming at the ants from atop your pedestal?
rmc 14y ago
You're not living under South African apartheid rule. You are not being oppressed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country

jinushaun 14y ago

Lame. Anti-white racism is still racism. Growing up colored in the US, I encounter anti-white racism all the time among my peers, but never once received racism against my skin color from whites.

rubydriver 14y ago
How interesting I grew up colored in the US also and experience racism everyday from white people. Please let me know which part of the US you are living in. I would love to live there and not have to worry about people giving me a hard time because of the color of my skin.

drbig 14y ago

Ehh... I thought that 'diversity' means we give everyone equal opportunities and treat them the same way. Now it seems it means 'we need to have this particular distribution of genders and races'. Utter stupidity, from one extreme straight to the other :( Isn't it really obvious that different topics inherently attract different audiences, and as long as we give everyone equal chances to participate we are okay?

lutusp 14y ago
> I thought that 'diversity' means we give everyone equal opportunities and treat them the same way. No, that's survival of the fittest. Giving everyone equal opportunity and being blind to everything else is how nature does it. It's called evolution. "Diversity" is a code word for increasing the number of participants over what natural forces would allow for, if the best and the brightest were to be the only selection criterion. Having said that, there is a point to diversity -- it hopes to address prejudicial forces that prevent everyone from having an equal opportunity to show what they're made of. But "diversity" means exactly the opposite of what you seem to think. The point of diversity is to maximize variety, not competence. But it can often lead to a good outcome.