Serious, not intended to flame bait question: Why is race/gender featured so prominently in this technical post?
Would it be appropriate to open a post with “black men in tech had a twitter meltdown”?
I was wondering that as well. However I am not sure I would call it a technical post. To me it reads more like the rant of a person who hates react because it was written by facebook.
Another issue is that there is a much more serious and extensive history of value judgements about "black" people, rather than about "white" people.
At least in the US there never was widespread slavery of white people because they are white, or widespread ideas of white skin color being associated with lesser intelligence, culture or whatever.
It is, however, very important not to get hung up in racist terminology. For example it only serves the racists' cause to argue who is actually black or who is actually white, or how much of each.
It's not like the average heckler on the street asks somebody where he is from, his religion, what he is doing for a living or what his ancestral gene mixture is!
Please don't explain what you mean by "their own racism". I don't accept reverse racism BS...
And yes, ignoring nasty history is dog-whistling. You can say certain things, which are clearly perceived as racist by racists and the offended, and then avoid responsibility by claiming "it's only because the history".
Example: It's not antisemitic to blame George Soros (a jew) for political influence through his money, except that there is a broad and infamous history of such conspiracy theories. Same for "dual loyalty".
It's not racist or insensitive to use black-face as a disguise, except for the long history of mistrel-acts of making fun of Afro-American (slaves) for being lazy, uncultured and stupid.
It's not necessarily racist to suspect a Muslim of being a terrorist. Hey, there may actually be valid and objective reasons for such a suspicion. But especially because of the context and the history of Muslims being accosted as such and being targeted all the time, such claims better have substantial proof.
The nature of progress is movement relative to the position currently being held. I bet you're right that a lot of people are just thoughtlessly bandwagoning, but I bet the blanket dismissal of progressive attitudes also misses a lot of people who are thoughtfully deciding where to go from here.
My point though was not about the progressive attitudes, as much as about the ridiculous excess ("guys" being offensive, etc). In a decade or so these would be viewed the same way most people viewed hippies after the 70s...
One difference is that "black men in tech" are a minority with a lot of discriminatory experiences. Criticizing a minority you don't belong to for complaining too much is something different than criticizing the majority you do belong to for the same thing.
I don't know about "react-gate" yet, but I'm sure to find out in a few minutes.
Because for some, race/gender is a primary factor in how they experience being a developer. I believe that is the fundamental point the article is making -- that the reasons why React is what it is today are not necessarily objective and totally sound but rather significantly influenced by what ideas and interests were already in the population at the cost of other ideas that may require more of a leap from the mainstream to fully understand but may also be better overall.
It would not be appropriate to post with the title “black men in tech had a twitter meltdown” but it is at least this okay with white dudes for the same reason why it's fine to make fun of The Mountain if he can't hit a squat in the gym but it's not fine to make fun of your buddy who's trying to make a change in his life. Of course how much better The Mountain is than your buddy at lifting heavy stuff is probably a larger discrepancy than the gap between white men and and minority women's abilities to affect the course of the developer landscape but that's the mechanism.
Just like this whole drama, this attitude (I don’t like my gender and race being the focus of things, therefore I’m going to do it to you) seems counter-productive to the cause of inclusion and diversity.