Pushback from my diversity talks
This is part of the exchange that occurred in response to my talk on diversity at gogaruco, where I pointed out the the entire audience, and myself, are a bunch of sexist, racists, homophobic bigots, and the slightly more nuanced followup at rubyconf.
I'm anonymizing this to avoid causing a flame war for the quite reasonable guy who posted it, and because he followed up with this:
Well, I'm glad we had our conversation last week. I feel less strongly about the issue now than I did before that conversation. I think I was mostly reacting to the inflammatory nature of your talk (ie. opening with calling the audience racists, bigots, and misogynists). I've gone back and watched your talk on confreaks, and it doesn't seem as inflammatory as it did that night (chalk that up to either having more perspective after our conversation, or being over the shock value of those statements).
...
So I feel I've gotten my thoughts out of my system, and don't feel strongly enough to post them publicly.
His original thoughts are below:
I care about equality and despise discrimination, and yet I am concerned and offended by a growing trend to accuse the technology sector, and the software industry specifically, of being bigots, racists, and misogynists. Think about this question: Are the interior decorating power elite keeping straight men out of their industry? I don't know the answer to that question, but I doubt that they are. Some may suggest that the analogy isn't a good one, because straight men aren't typically systematically oppressed. I'm not sure I agree with that either. I'll return to this analogy.
I've not studied discrimination, oppression, women's issues, etc. beyond that which is taught in a typical American college education and that which is generally reported in major news media. But I do have eyes, ears, an open mind, and I generally don't see evidence of discrimination in the software development industry.
I do see that the industry is dominated by white males. There is no question of that. Furthermore, I personally would greatly welcome more diversity. But are the demographics of the software development industry an indication of systematic oppression/discrimination? Is the white male dominance a malignancy?
Surely there is discrimination. I would be foolish to suggest that it doesn't happen. It is a sad fact that discrimination persists everywhere. So when blaming a lack of diversity of a group on discrimination, then surely the accusation is that the group discriminates more than the population on whole.
[need to flush out more of my thoughts prior to wrapping up]
Returning to the analogy of the interior decorating industry, I would argue that fewer straight men are interested in interior decorating. I would also argue that there is nothing wrong with that. To argue otherwise would to suggest that there should be a uniform distribution of interests and competencies across all genders, races, and sexual orientations. I don't believe that belief in human equality in general means a belief in uniform distribution of interests and competencies.
[Other analogies include: Are ice hockey players racist since most ice hockey professionals are white males? I'd argue that socio-economics play a bigger role in determining someone's likelihood of becoming a professional hockey player.]
