[danenania]

Actually, selecting speakers without regard to gender or race and ending up with 100% white guys (which is easily possible, since they are very overrepresented in the field) isn't racist or sexist, whereas selecting people specifically based on these traits would be racist and sexist, by definition.

I think diversity is a worthwhile goal for a conference, but we shouldn't throw around these labels so freely (and incorrectly).

[phillmv]

Listen, white guy, the simplest counter argument is that white guys just aren't 100% of the field. They're probably <60-70% of the field.

So yeah, you do end up with a problem if somehow, conference after conference, we only field white guys.

[tomwalker]

I don't think any conference should be allowed to have proceed without a single black person, Eskimo, female or badger on the speak list.

Here are a few shows that were also not diverse enough for my liking: London Boat show - too many white males http://www.londonboatshow.com/2013/whats_on/attractions__eve...

British Educational Training and Technology Show - not a single person with a double barrel name :( http://www.bettshow.com/Conferences-Features

The baby show - only females speaking. This is COMPLETELY unacceptable. This show should NOT go ahead. Refunds all around http://www.thebabyshow.co.uk/excel/new-parent/for-baby

Professional Beauty- not enough males http://www.professionalbeauty.co.uk/page.cfm/Link=149/nocach...

/sarcasm

[danenania]

You should calm down and read what I actually wrote.

"So yeah, you do end up with a problem if somehow, conference after conference, we only field white guys."

I agree with you. But in this case, racist and sexist are not appropriate terms unless you believe that speakers were actually excluded based on race or gender.

Also, when you begin a post that is meant to argue against discrimination and prejudice with "Listen, white guy", it might be time to step away from the keyboard for awhile...

[phillmv]

I did read what you wrote. You just spelled out a very common fallacy.

It is racist, and/or sexist. It's just a kind of wholesale discrimination, visavis the retail, personalized kind of racism/sexism we're more accustomed to.

It's not intentionally evil, there may not be any malice behind it, but it's still… discriminatory.

As white dudes, it's especially hard to see as we're largely unaffected by it, blah blah privilege, etc.

[harshreality]

How do you propose to fix things? Selecting speakers that are not as preferred by the selection committee simply because of being a minority race (minority in the context of the community in question)? i.e. the committee ranks all speaker applications, figures out the necessary demographics to mirror the conference's targeted community, and then allocates speaker slots for each demographic to the best speakers who are in that demographic?

If you artificially make minorities (based on the community's demographics) a majority on the selection committee, in the hope they will select speakers that more closely mirror the larger community, and if they pick more speakers who are members of minority groups, how do you know they aren't being subconsciously racist/reverse-racist in exactly the same way you're complaining about whites/males being racist?

How do you objectively evaluate the race-blind quality of a set of potential speakers if your claim is that everyone on any possible selection committee is potentially subconsciously biased?

What if you make an effort to select speakers that mirror the demographics of the larger community, and conference attendees rate this new anti-racist conference lower than they rated the last ("racist") one? Is this demographics equality campaign to be pursued at the expense of attendees' perceived value of the conference?

[phillmv]

>How do you propose to fix things?

Make sure you pick two or three females for at least every eight to seven males. Aim for as high a mix as you can.

>how do you know they aren't being subconsciously racist/reverse-racist in exactly the same way you're complaining about whites/males being racist?

That's easy; there's no such thing as 'reverse racism'. There's discrimination, and anyone can be discriminated against. Furthermore, few if any conferences are organized in the matter you described. There's no selection committee. Only 1-to-3 people are involved picking speakers.

>How do you objectively evaluate the race-blind quality of a set of potential speakers if your claim is that everyone on any possible selection committee is potentially subconsciously biased?

You misunderstand my claim. My claim isn't that people are subconsciously biased, my claim is conference after conference filled with white dudes is a sign the conference speakers aren't doing their jobs of presenting their audiences with the widest range of interesting ideas.

>Is this demographics equality campaign to be pursued at the expense of attendees' perceived value of the conference?

This assumes that your pool of potential speakers is only slightly larger than the number of speaker slots. There are fewer potential female speakers, but this does not automatically mean that you can't provide a full slate of A+ speakers - only that you have to work a little harder at it.

See: http://2012.jsconf.eu/2012/09/17/beating-the-odds-how-we-got... and http://2012.jsconf.eu/2012/09/17/beating-the-odds-how-we-got...

[harshreality]

So the problem is the underrepresented groups aren't sending in talk proposals unless they get personal encouragement.

That's tragic, and in that case I agree that underrepresentation is a problem, but I don't agree that organizers are discriminating if they don't make that extra personal effort to reach out to potential presenters from underrepresented groups.

I agree there should ideally be more encouragement, but I don't think it should be required for conference organizers to do that, to avoid allegations of discrimination.

[aw3c2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_the_United_Kin... says that in 2001, >90% of the people in the UK were white.

Got any sources for your <60-70% in the Ruby community?

[phillmv]

Yeah, 51% of the population are also women.

[aw3c2]

Now you are trolling. Or do you have a source for that? It seems highly unlikely that a programming community would have such a high percentage of women.

I would link to wikipedia for some verification of that feeling but all I could fine were biased feminist articles on that topic.

[astrodust]

> It seems highly unlikely that a programming community would have such a high percentage of women.

This is the problem with the programming community we need to fix.

[phillmv]

For posterity: I edited my comment to clarify my statement prior to seeing this comment.

Half of all people are women. !caucasians and !males are probably at least 30% of the industry, especially when you consider how minorities are overrepresented.

[Yver]

Since we're not citing any source, I'll say that population X is at least Y% of the industry.

[markshead]

You are saying that greater than 40% of the developers in GB are not white males. What are you basing this on?

GB is only about 10% non-white and last statistic I saw on gender was that only 1.5% of people participating on open source projects (world wide) were female.

[phillmv]

To be strictly fair, I live in Toronto so that may skew my own perspectives - my graduating Computer Science class was definitely <60% white.

[thisduck]

Actually, your idea of racism is precisely inverted. Racism isn't just about calling people names and hurting their feelings, racism also includes a systemic exclusion of a group. And if we end up with 100% white guys time and time again that is racism, again, whether you like it or not.

Selecting qualified underrepresented people would not be racist or sexist. Ending up with white men all the time would be. And we should throw these labels around, this is something that should be discussed and addressed in variety of ways.