[ralonso]

I rarely ever comment, but posts similar to this one have been popping out more and more as of late. I am a minority. I grew up in a different country, and most of my close friends are minorities, too, both female and male; half of them being in the tech industry. (If my username didn't give it away, I'm hispanic and so are most of my acquaintances.)

With that out of the way, I do not understand anything about this article. This bolded line, for example:

>Rarely, though, will you ever hear a white person lamenting about working conditions that their black/brown child/spouse/sibling might have to endure, because they rarely have those relationships, so aren’t forced to develop empathy for brown/black people.

What working conditions? Care giving any examples? What are some pointers you could give to white people to help them understand your deplorable working conditions? Is it simply that there are no black speakers at conferences, or holding positions in these tech organizations?

Personal experiences, as well as experiences from my hispanic friends, point to no such implied "bad working conditions." Some of my friends are brown-skinned and have noticeable accents. Most still use Spanish as their primary language, both on and offline. Yet there has been not one single incident involving either myself or any of my hispanic friends where we suffered any sort of discrimination, or experienced unwelcoming working conditions.

Maybe the author and I have different goals when we attend such conferences. Maybe there are more hispanics than blacks or native Americans in tech. Yet I don't understand why that would matter when attending a conference.

>Yet for the 2015 conference, they could not manage to find one black woman to be a “headline” speaker. Two white men are included in the set of headline speakers at a conference celebrating women in technology, but not a single black woman.

It infuriates me to see this obsession with ethnic or racial background. This obsession with the color of the speaker's skin. In my eyes, that the keynote speakers are white males does not invalidate their opinions in any way. There is no implied message that they speak on behalf of women, or minorities. It's an invitation. It does not mean that they're not qualified on the subject - if anything, these "old white men" are the ones running these big companies and are there not just to speak, but to also listen to the other speakers and the attendants.

I opened the videos linked in the article and I'll try to skip through them and I'll report back, hopefully. It just boggles my mind that in this day and age there is still this obsession with the speaker's racial background. And there is no solution proposed, either, besides "they should find more people of color to speak at these events." Isn't that the one of the points of these conferences? And is there any progress being made, considering that last year's was the first one Google organized? Did the author gather any information about this year's? Does the author have any proposals or people she would like to see at these events?

I go to tech conferences to learn. My political and ethnic background is never, ever something that makes me biased against or for an event. It is also never a problem. My slightly noticeable accent, my hispanic facial features, my shirts with Spanish sentences, they do not have any effect on how people treat me.

It might all come down to what your goals are when attending any event.

[azima]

you're speaking from your experience which is fine and YMMV, but it's useful to listen to hers about how she feels. Discounting others' experiences doesn't help. She's talking about feeling excluded from tech as a woman of color because tech has made a priority to include more women speakers, but has completely ignored that there are women of color who are ignored. The industry thinking that they're"solving" diversity by increasing women, but ignoring women of color are only solving part of the problem. The main point I'm making is inclusion matters, in the workforce and at conferences. And the benefit of having people of color speaking is being exposed to experiences and P.O.V.s from people of color. There are studies that show that people of color or from various backgrounds are better problem solvers because of adversity they've had.

Also, using anecdotal evidence from your circle of friends who have had positive experiences is dismissive of others who haven't.

[ohhimark]

You know, I find it strange how I can't remember a single person complaining about lack of diversity who wasn't complaining only about their specific type of diversity.

Case in point: the author is, by her own admission, a black woman and complains about the part of her identity that is not well represented: her (black) skin.

There's something almost funny in asking people to care for one's situation when the speaker isn't even speaking at large: why isn't she also complaining about asian, native american, indian and how many others not being represented?

[rdancer]

Because in America, your opinions are only valid as far as your credentials. For example, if you have dark skin, your opinions on black Americans are valid, if you're autistic, your opinions on mentally ill Americans are valid, if you're a computer, your opinions on American computers are valid, etc. It may be a flawed system, but it's better than slavery and feudalism, and it somewhat works to keep people's minds off the real issues, so it's all good.

[azima]

Not sure if sarcasm or not, but it's REALLY hard to understand wha ankther races experiences without listening and people who listen without being dismissive/judgemental are exceptionally rare.

[sinxoveretothex]

[Same poster as ohhimark, had forgotten my password]

Maybe so, but what I mean is that I (and presumably the people she is writing this for) are not black women. They're not indians, asians and many other things too of course (which is my point).

As an opinion piece (which I suppose it is), it's something interesting to think about. Yet, doesn't it say something about everyone of us if even minorities advocating for equal rights don't see the bigger picture and advocate for more than their specific situation?

It's a self-defeating argument in a way: the author is arguing that people are caring mostly for only one type of inequality… by decrying only their specific situation while making no mention of all the other types.

I guess what I am saying is that I wish the author would have framed her case as an example tying in to the general case.

When one gets to this point in their reasoning, perhaps they'd realize that we are resource-constrained and no matter what we do, we'll be "excluding" some categories.

And yet what I just wrote is too dismissive. I don't know what the best way to go about all this is, but it sure is very upsetting to be blamed, as part of the "dominant group", for not doing enough when the very people pointing the fingers seem to have similar biases towards minority groups they are not part of.

Then again, perhaps in this case they could have just called the event "inclusion for women" since that's what it's currently focused on.

[azima]

Well yeah, she's obviously speaking from her position about something she sees and feels. Like most people, you're most aware of obstacles you face and less of others. She's fighting her fight. And obviously anyone reading that can apply that to other races/groups.