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As a brown man who has had to deal with racism at various times in my life, I find this whole affair terribly condescending. If I want to speak at a ruby confe
by alinajaf 14y ago
As a brown man who has had to deal with racism at various times in my life, I find this whole affair terribly condescending.
If I want to speak at a ruby conference, I don't need to see other brown people there to 'motivate' me to do so. I especially don't need to see white people flagellate themselves publicly in my defence either. If the goal is to have a mixed colour-palette at the conference, change the fucking wallpaper.
> Given that we have never experienced that life, we probably shouldn't tell minorities how they should feel, and what they should be afraid of
And yet, here we are. This whole issue is telling me that I should feel discriminated against and underrepresented in the UK ruby community[1]. I didn't feel any of these things before, but a bunch of white people on the internet are pretty sure I should be feeling this way.
Manufactured diversity of the sort people are advocating here is unnecessary at best. I don't know where the desire for it comes from, but if I had to guess, I'd put forward that it's based on middle-class white peoples collective guilt for pre 21st century racism. The reducto-ad-absurdum against manufactured diversity is that I don't see anyone arguing that transgenders, veterans, BNP members or left-handed people are underrepresented in the UK ruby community.
[1] Go to an LRUG meetup and I'll think you'll find that WASPs are the only group that are underrepresented in terms of the UK population as a whole.
- Dirlewanger 14y ago> I'd put forward that it's based on middle-class white peoples collective guilt for pre 21st century racism. God, you're so spot on. When someone comes along that's supposedly from the same group of people that whites are trying to coddle and foster and tells them to fuck off (kindly), they don't know what to do.
- alinajaf 14y ago:). Additionally, I find the double standard that I can get away with phrases like "white peoples collective guilt" to be quite abhorrent. A white person saying the same thing with inverse colours would be deemed a racist, and we all have no qualms with discriminating against white racists.
- anewguy 14y agoHave you noticed that the entire twitter conversation is between white people? White people invented cultural Marxism (i.e. respectable left-wing racism)
- CJefferson 14y agoJust one point. You don't need motivation to speak at this particular conference. You, and anyone else who aren't in a small group of white males, were not given the opportunity to speak.
- alinajaf 14y agoReally? If I had built up my profile in the ruby community, gave regular talks at conferences etc you're saying that I wouldn't have been given the opportunity to talk? That they would specifically turn down proposals for non-white speakers regardless of their standing in the ruby community? By this argument why isn't anyone arguing the corner of transgenders, Native Americans and people who think that the original Battlestar Galactica was better than the re-imagined series?
- fatbird 14y agoAs part of the linked article, it was revealed that many people who are not white, or not male, but who were prominent and very qualified to speak, and available to speak, simply weren't invited in the initial list of 15. In other words, they sat down to draw up a list, and out of a large and diverse community of Rubyists, invited only the white male ones. No one is saying they did it consciously or deliberately, but they did it, and got some push back on it, and /ragequit their own conference. So, no, you wouldn't have been given the opportunity to talk. (And btw, fuck you for the phrase "white people's collective guilt" ;)