After I gave a couple inflammatory talks on diversity and discrimination in the ruby community I got some feedback and pushback.
Here is my response:
To use your example, plenty of hockey players are probably racist, actually, even if they don't realize it. Not to pick on them, but part of my talk was about how pretty much everyone is, they just don't consciously acknowledge it. I'm not talking about overt racism, just the basic assumptions of the privileged that come out in everything because they don't realize the are privileged and how underexposed to other cultures, races, ways of life, etc, they may be.
Athletes in all nearly white fields certainly aren't immune to bigotry. Having grown up a competitive bump skier I can attest to that. Like most winter sports it's a very white field. Often bigotry is strongly linked with lack of exposure and diversity. Due to the very fact of not having more minority and female colleagues we start subconsciously building assumptions.
In SF, the majority of downtown business people's exposure to black people is the homeless. I'd put a fiver on that negatively affectively their biases. There are studies that watching the Summer Olympics, which has a lot black role models performing well, temporarily counters some of the subconscious racist bias in test subjects. And I think everyone has anecdotal experience with racists justifications they've overheard that negative experiences can create biases.
A large part of what sparked my initial talk, was a) @bryanl giving a talk where he had a line about it being about time we (the white audience) were the uncomfortable ones in the room and b) @gigglegirl4e gaving a talk titled "Whose wife are you?" because that is something she hears, especially at conferences. As long as she is hearing that...
You really should read up some on feminist theory and privilege. I really, really don't care if a bunch of straight white males get a little offended that they don't realize how good they have it and how exclusionary they are. I am queer, and yes the field is to blame. Not entirely, no. And maybe in part it's better than other fields, but it's far worse than many. We are an awesome, low bullshit community, based around a very easy language to learn. We should be the best community there is on this topic. It's not that I don't love us, it's that I do enough to have set a higher bar for my expectations. As @dnscollective said in his far gentler, more inclusive lightning talk, let's be the industry and community we want to work in.
If you think being offended at having people say the field is discriminatory and that you have biases is rough, then you should sit down longer and listen, not talk to, but listen to some of the black guys or women in the field, on the topic. Not all of them may have had a rough time, but most will be able to talk your ear off.
As for the other example, I think comparing the cultural stereotype of interior designers all being gay, to the straight, white, male predominance in ours is actually offensive. For one, it's based on a huge assumption without any apparent research backing it. It comes off as a defensive knee-jerk rather than having to admit that being a white male in a field making giant amounts of money, while the rest of the country swirls down the drain, might be a pretty cush situation, that being excluded from is actually a form of class warfare. Do you think Interior Design and Ruby Programmer are equivalently powerful positions in our current economy? Also, there are some long standing reasons for straight men not being as prevalent in Interior Design (which has actually shifted farther in the last 5 years than our field, so hah, its a straw man AND moot!) and they have mostly to do with sexism and discrimination.
Interior Design has been the domain of housewives and openly gay men, because the "real men" were busy dominating the "real jobs." Do you think Jewish people were discriminating against the goyim by keeping them out of the money-changing field, during a couple hundred (or thousand?) years of European history? By my admittedly limited reading (not being a history major), largely not, it was actually discrimination the other way that drove Jewish people into that field as one of the few jobs they were allowed.
Also, I don't get what our whole field's anti-intellectual and academic obsession is. We seem fine saying "Well I haven't read the Gang of Four, but it's not much use anyways" or "Well I haven't really studied this field, but I have lots of opinions based on my own personal experience which is obviously applicable to the position of the historically discriminated-against and oppressed." This stretches out to me, too - I am a college drop-out. So I do understand the bias against overly academic CS, but unfortunately, we've let it bleed over so far into anti-academia that we sounds like George W. Bush supporters ranting against those damn liberal (feminist) snobs, sometimes.
Usually, I just write negative responses off as the classic example of what happens when you speak to power and privilege: offense, defensiveness, and pooh poohing. "There isn't any problem with black people having to use separate water fountains; they get the same water." Almost universally, IME, when you explain the huge difference between discrimination by the majority, by the patriarchy, by those who have always had it easier, without even realizing how much so, versus discrimination up the ladder by the oppressed, you get anger, justification, and dodging of responsibility.
In fact DHH, is one of the few counter-examples I can think of - after the first Gogaruco, when these concepts were explained to him he said roughly "Hmm, that makes sense, if you are already the minority in the room, and here for professional development or work, that wouldn't be very fair, to be forcefully exposed to something that highlights just how in the minority you are." When he did that I gained even more respect for him than when I got in a technical debate with him and only realized how right he was 3 months later, when I learned more.
End of my response
I never sent it, because the guy in question wrote the nuancing reply that I mention in my previous post and gave me the go ahead to use his anonymous words for a discussion point. And now I add him to the small pool of guys who, even when pushed hard by my intentionally inflammatory, discussion-starting claims, actually listen, process, and admit that maybe those crazy feminists aren't totally making this all up. ;)
UPDATE
Thanks for the edits @alexch
