Hey white dudes. I see you're pretty worked up. Non-white dude here to explain.
When you're white, and you're male, technology (as a career field) is pretty accessible. And here's why. You can open up a newspaper or a tech blog or whatever, and many of the major important people in the photos staring back at you basically look like you. And that's nice, because you can be reassured that someone with your background and origins has a place in technology.
If you're not male, or not white, you have to look a bit harder. Sometimes a lot harder, indeed, to find people who both look like you and are doing what you want to be doing professionally.
Now, you'll give me an argument that looks just shouldn't matter. That we should look at people's minds and ideas, not their skin color, in evaluating their contributions.
And while I'm sure such an ideal feels reassuring – it's bunk in this context.
Diversity of "race" is really a proxy for diversity of background, experience and origins. For maximizing the varieties of life story represented.
It's useful to do this because diversity of experience leads to diversity of solutions. Diversity also breeds further diversity, as people with wildly different backgrounds feel more welcome into the fold.
So when we see people helping to lead a community, and some of those people aren't like the majority, that's encouraging. It says that even though a given person is "different" from the norm, they are welcome, they may be successful.
Star Trek is lauded for this reason. Actor Nichelle Nichols was thinking of leaving the show. None other than Dr. Martin Luther King implored her to remain – he believed a black professional woman on television would be a crucial role model for young people. (In her childhood, Whoopi Goldberg is said to have screamed, "Hey Mom! Look! There's a black woman on the TV and she ain't no maid!")
And you may argue, well, why should diversity matter? Let some people do some stuff and other people do others. And I'll tell you that position, on top of being lazy, opens us up to many missed opportunities. In technology, we want as many different sorts of humans as possible all working on our hard problems. If STEM is a country club for white guys, that leaves out a huge chunk of the population who might otherwise make great contributions.
One last thing. When you say stuff like "Wull, shucks, what were they supposed to do? Find a token [non-white-male] to fill the spot?" you make it sound like you don't believe there are any people but white guys with useful things to say on the subject of the conference. Careful with that.
The barrier to entry to becoming a Ruby programmer is as low as can be: all you need is a laptop and internet access. You can become a celebrity without people even knowing your name, let alone your face: why_ (or _why or whatever) was at one point the biggest name in Ruby (AFAICT from outside), and he might have been a cat with a keyboard for all anyone knew.
On top of that, there's plenty of famous and powerful non-white engineers. And if you don't want to look at the top, look at your peers: in my university in America, whites are the minority in most gradute CS classes.
By all objective measures, this is the last industry where people should be subject to a witch-hunt and have their conference cancelled because of their speaker lineup.
> The barrier to entry to becoming a Ruby programmer is as low as can be
This isn't a conversation about being a programmer, however. This is a conversation about being part of a programming community. Successful assimilation into a community has numerous benefits for one's career prospects, social life and overall success. Exclusion can be correspondingly damaging.
As a result, programming communities all over the place are having a tough conversation: is this community sufficiently inclusive? Some are indifferent to the cause of inclusiveness. What's unfortunate is that those most indifferent seem so consistently to be those most already included.
So in this case, some people decided they were uncomfortable with the level of inclusion. That's a fair conversation to have.
(As it happens, while _why's true identity may have been a secret, his membership in the racial and gender majority group for his field is not:
> So in this case, some people decided they were uncomfortable with the level of inclusion. That's a fair conversation to have.
Certainly. But when the conversation turns into accusations of racism and a boycott (or feared boycott?) that ends with the sponsors running away and the conference being cancelled, it's a sign that the conversation has gone astray.
In fact, it's hard to even have a rational conversation on inclusivity in CS if we're already at the point where such things happen. We really need cooler heads to have a rational debate.
"If I was a poor black kid I’d use the free technology available to help me study. I’d become expert at Google Scholar. I’d visit study sites like SparkNotes and CliffsNotes to help me understand books. I’d watch relevant teachings on Academic Earth, TED and the Khan Academy. (I say relevant because some of these lectures may not be related to my work or too advanced for my age. But there are plenty of videos on these sites that are suitable to my studies and would help me stand out.) I would also, when possible, get my books for free at Project Gutenberg and learn how to do research at the CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia to help me with my studies."
The author of the linked Forbes commentary touches but fails to understand that most poor black kids in urban areas do not have convenient or easy access to a computer. If they're lucky, they'll have access to a working computer at their school. If they're really lucky, they may even live close enough to the public library to use those computers.
The author fails to grasp that a kid from Oakland, Cleveland, or South LA, has never heard of TED, or Academic Earth, or Khan Academy. He has no idea that there are free resources available online, and no reason to expect such.
But what can you expect? The Forbes article is written by a very wealthy, middle-aged, white man who had both parents and lived in a wealthy neighborhood.
They didn't "have their conference cancelled". They cancelled it because they felt pressure from their sponsors. Without more example or explanation, we have to take them at their word that the pressure was on level with a witch-hunt. If that's the case, that is indeed a poor state of affairs in terms of open debate and civility.
They cancelled it because they felt pressure from their sponsors.
I'm skeptical about this. The company I work for were the only sponsor formally announced on their site. We were behind them 100% and didn't have a clue about the controversy or the cancellation until we found out after they made their decision. It doesn't add up. If financial strain was a reason, why not contact us to see if we could help?
If I organised a conference, and failed to attract a single female speaker, especially in a community where sexism is a sensitive issue, I would immediately decide to cancel it of my own volition. I don't want to contribute to the type of things that make women feel excluded.
So if women choose not to be included on your activity, you would cancel it, because women would feel excluded? OK....
If I never took part in anything that didn't attract females (that were not family), I would have never learned anything, or seen any movies, or eaten any food...
That's a bit of a disingenuous comparison. Organizing a conference that should be representative of a very large, diverse community is not quite the same as organizing personal activities.
That's a good point, but keep in mind three things:
1) It's a process. We already have non-white people in top positions (both in the industry and in academia), so there's no lack of inspiration, but it takes time for those who have inspired to make their way through school and immigration. Right now there are multitudes of Indian and Chinese students in American universities: in a few years you'll see them at conferences. And that is already going to happen: they're certainly not going to drop out of their degrees and go home because some Brits were not diverse enough with their conference in Manchester.
2) From what I've seen, many of those students are more interested in enterprise or research applications than in doing web development with Ruby, so you might see them at slightly different conferences.
3) This particular conference was in the UK, not in America or in India or in China or in France. Let's be careful not to call the entire country racist just because it's mostly populated by whites.
The conference speakers, though, were not limited to being British.
I agree with #2, but Ruby is a fairly special case, in that its creator, and still one of its main contributors, is Japanese. So you can't make the argument "if only non-whites stepped it up in Ruby dev"...(but the argument that none of the Japanese speakers could make it/were affordable/wanted to come is still legit).
It's true that the speakers were not limited to being British, but it's more expensive for someone outside the country to attend (even with compensation, they'd still expend more time, undergo more stress, etc.). Also, it was a new conference, not a large and established one, so it seems natural that it would have mainly a local draw. They may have even made the choice to invite more local speakers, to promote the Manchester/UK tech scene, which would be a worthwhile goal for such a conference, although it's directly at odds with the diversity goal.
It's true that Ruby is a Japanese invention (I wonder if all these racists are aware of what they're bringing into their good ol' boys' club ;)), but as you note, Japan is so far away that there are still difficulties in participating in a little new conference in Manchester. Also, Ruby got its big break with Rails, which was developed in Chicago, I think, so the Japanese community might not have gotten as much of a headstart as one would expect. Or maybe they are using Ruby for far more interesting things than web development. I don't know.
Rails was developed when David Heinemeier Hansson was still in his home town, Copenhagen, Denmark. He was working part-time for 37signals, but it was several more years before he moved to Chicago.
> Also, Ruby got its big break with Rails, which was developed in Chicago, I think, so the Japanese community might not have gotten as much of a headstart as one would expect. Or maybe they are using Ruby for far more interesting things than web development. I don't know.
And I think that's the heart of the matter...The Japanese (or any number of non-European/American Ruby communities) could be doing something amazing...and we would have a hard time knowing, because of the inherent geographical and language barriers. That's why it's not just the "moral" thing to make an effort toward diversity, but it is a potential creative and intellectual boon.
In any case, the OP should've just included a statement saying, "we asked speakers x,y,z, for example, but each had a previous commitment, etc. etc. etc.". In fact, that's a point they should've made more prominently in the debate before canceling the conference.
Like I said, in my university in America I see a majority of non-white students in CS. I really can't see them thinking "can I really do this? should I be doing this? why is my face different from all the other computer guys' faces?". Heck, a huge chunk of the professors are also non-white.
I haven't had a boss who wasn't a white male in nearly a decade, women are still harassed at conferences, and we can only find white guys to talk at a conference about a language invented by a Japanese guy.
But Camillo's class has foreigners in it, so everything is completely okay now.
There's a big difference between the composition of your university class and the social makeup of a professional community. Let's talk when you're out in your career.
anonymous was asking about a lack of inspiration. The fact that there are so many students shows that they are definitely being inspired to enter the field.
That last line is interesting. You lead up to presenting a scenario where one might rightfully expect a conference to naturally reflect a diverse speaker lineup, reflecting the diversity in the industry overall. I agree with that.
But I am not sure what you mean by the last line. Do you mean:
1: "This is the last industry where it should be necessary to criticise or cancel a conference with an all-male lineup [so the fact that this conference does in fact have an all-male lineup, in the context of this particular community having problems with sexism in the past, raises a huge red flag, and probably should be canceled]".
or do you mean:
2. "This is the last industry to have issues with sexism because we are so diverse, so when one conference comes along where this diversity is not represented, it shouldn't be an issue".
I find both reasonable I guess. Although considering the fact that this topic is already a sensitive issue, I lead more towards opinion 1.
FYI: I don't think the OP was talking about physical barrier to entries. That's all the more reason why such a big disparity between privileged males and all other minorities in programming should be frightening!
"Hey white dudes. I see you're pretty worked up. Non-white dude here to explain."
I'm a white dude whose biological parent is non-white dude who grew up in a disadvantaged socio-economic background, and I got to tell you that is probably one of the more offensive lines I have read recently. I am white and male and technology was not pretty accessible.
The only part I got lucky with was that the late 80's and early 90's had a class of entry computers that were wiped out by video game consoles and Windows. They were available and my Dad made one hell of a good decision. Schools who cannot afford vocational programs were not going to afford computer programming. If I had been born 10 years earlier or later then I would not be in a technology field.
I have seen too many people make assumptions based on race that should have been made on wealth and location. Using race as a proxy is wrong.
What opportunities does a young boy or girl from a disadvantaged background have to get into programming? Libraries and schools are not the answer. They have locked computers to keep people from being problems. There are programs to buy kids musical instruments but not computers. OLPC is basically a foreign aid program as you cannot go an buy a kid one.
You want some diversity, skip looking at what-is and look at the next generation. The C64 died in 1994, what was the replacement on ramp to programming. It sure as heck isn't the web browser. Our field is not diverse because of socio-economics. It costs almost like a young hockey player to be a good programmer.
// someone going to make that stupid inflation argument again and I would point to how the under $200 price point is still important (look at tablets)
I agree 100% with your point that coming from financial disadvantage keeps anyone out of technology, from any race. And that this is a big problem that we should solve.
But this is a conversation about existing technologists. About people being welcomed into a community as leaders versus being held at arms' length as outsiders. About the disproportionate representation of a single demographic in tech.
As to the race thing, I get it. It's an uncomfortable conversation to have. People work hard in their careers, it's uncomfortable for someone to come over and point out that they got there with the help of a ladder they didn't know they had.
Growing up poor sucks no matter how you look, no matter who your ancestors are. But let's also be real – growing up poor versus growing up poor plus the additional disadvantages that stack up when you're not part of the majority, those can still be very different experiences.
Look, the creator of Ruby is non-white, and if you think any conference wouldn't welcome him then I don't know what to say.
The existing technologists are by and large under 30 at these conferences (I won't go into the ageism to go with economic problems of computing), so they are a result of the no cheap entry barrier I talked about. Fixing the current demographic is long past solving.
I think your last line is presumptuous. I didn't get a +1 because of race, far from it actually.
There's the biggest problem. You only consider two criteria and leave all the rest. If you care about community and people, you care about raising all ships. We have a huge problem in computer programming that the financially well off are going to be the only ones who can put the years in to be very good. The kid whose parents cannot afford the piano isn't going to become a virtuoso without help and computer have been there since the late 90's.
I wonder how many people arguing only for those two criteria use the word "fly-over" or talk about middle America like everyone is mentally deficient.
I was refused an internship because the area code of my high school and the area code of my college were the same. That's socio-economic, because the state has one area code, no local help or guidance about getting scholarships (no internet either), and state school had scholarships & recruiters. Opportunities are not lost only because of two attributes.
I think this argument falls flat on the face when people just do things they enjoy, like they might just enjoy programming. Do you really need permission to get into programming? I don't think so. On the internet, nobody even knows your skin color. If you like programming, just do it. When most of us started, it wasn't a trendy thing to do, we just did it because we enjoyed it.
What I find particularly vexing here: just a couple of years ago everybody was deriding the geeks hacking away on their computer, and didn't want to have anything to do with them. Now that they officially seem to have some fun, suddenly everybody wants in and the same people who made the nerds life hell 20 years ago by bashing them for their nerdiness now start bashing them for their alleged sexism and racism? What is wrong with people simply doing their thing? Why not leave such people alone, or join them if you enjoy the same things?
Edit: another thing, it seems this conference was simply organized by some Ruby developers who decided to give it a go. If people have a problem with it's structure, why don't they simply start their own conference?
For me personally (working at a ruby startup in Toronto), this is the breakdown of people currently working in dev
1 white female
3 chinese canadian males
1 japanese canadian male
1 korean male
1 russian male (guess he counts as white)
3 white males
1 cuban male
We have 5 founders, only one is white, all are male. 2 are on the dev team, one is chinese (CTO), the other white
We have interviewed many, many people in the time I have been at the company, to my knowledge only two have been female, one of whom we hired.
This is normal in my experience with good shops. If I walk in the door, and it is wall to wall white guys, you are going to have a much harder time selling me on your company. This is regional, anecdotal, etc. I am not saying there is no problem, obviously there is one if we have only ever had 2 women try to get jobs at our company. But here at least, it isn't backroom racism. My guess it has a lot more to do with the boys club feel at pretty much all engineering faculties in north american universities.
I am not an expert on all the issues involved - who is? I think a lot of those studies are quite interesting and might not always say what they seem to say. I only skimmed a bit, for starters, your study seems to be from 1991 (or the women were interviewed up to 1991). Then I only glanced one text snippet where a man says "perhaps because it is so rare for a man to go into that profession, they think I am so special and think more or me". Note that your study is about men in typically female professions. For all I know, the reverse could be true for women in typically male professions. From my own anecdotal experience I think women in IT would get preferred treatment most of the time. Also (anecdote again), we actually chose the kindergarden for our son because they have a male kindergardener in it (I guess that makes me officially sexist), so I confirm the study...
Another study that made the rounds recently showed that even women seem to prefer to hire men over women. Sadly it didn't explore possible reasons, and references to motherhood diminishing "work value" were dismissed out of hand.
Sorry, no time to watch a movie.
Also, I agree that gender issues are complicated, but not necessarily that women get the worse cards. Men and women both face their challenges. Just an example, I happen to think that it is rather cruel that men are automatically expected to work while women raise their kids - it deprives men of one of the most joyful aspects of life. Also, men tend to die 10 years earlier than women on average. Just genes? Or perhaps more pressure and stress?
But that is not the main issue for me. I have to say that personally, I have little patience for the woes of employment. That is, I really don't care who gets promoted to what. At least in IT, if you don't like other companies, you can start your own. And 50% of the world are women (more, in fact), so even if men don't want to deal with you (which I doubt), there should be plenty of customers. (That's of course all over simplified...).
I don't doubt that there is inequality, but I think there are plenty of ways around it, that are open to everyone.
You don't need to be an expert to know that there's more to the situation than:
On the internet, nobody even knows your skin color.
I agree with a lot of your points (Google's first search result wasn't the best study I guess :), but I don't think you've spent enough time researching the area to make broad statements:
But I think there are plenty of ways around it, that are open to everyone.
Is that really true? I'm essentially trying to drive the same point home as anu_gupta.
I am just making this up on the spot, but as I explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4801900 I don't think wage discrimination can be the reason for fewer women/race x people in IT, because discrimination would range across all jobs, so the relative attractiveness of jobs would remain the same.
Edit: OK I have to clarify, I think there are certainly situations where you are fucked up. I am glad that I am not living in some dictatorship in the 3rd world, where my best option would be trying to flee the country with a 20% chance of survival.
I don't think circumstances in the western world are quite so bad, though. I think there are certainly a lot of jerks, but the place is big enough to avoid them and there are enough non-jerks to do business with. Just my guess, though, obviously I haven't done any studies on it. Also I only know Europe, not the US - but it's supposed to be a free country?
I am 100% sure that if you are a woman who can code, you can find employment in this economy.
Well somebody had to be the first, though? And if it is just about seeing famous people in the media, why not get over yourself and admire somebody who has a different race or gender than you and follow in their steps?
I suppose it is more likely to be exposed to it if you are in the right neighborhood, although I don't want to invoke reverse stereotypes? Like I could say "in other neighborhoods people would perhaps be more likely to play basketball than to code", but that seems stupid and also racist?
Although I wonder about Playstation reach across communities?
At least white girls would seem to have the same odds for being friends with a white male nerd as other white boys, though? So perhaps they were much less likely to admire the nerd, which again was sort of the point I was making, I guess.
Don't know much about interracial friendships, where I grew up (Europe) there were not many non-white people when I was young.
Again, I am not denying that there might be statistical reasons why some people are more likely to be exposed to computers than others. From that it is a far step to call for affirmative action, though, because over time, those uneven starting points should fade away - at least when we talk about coding.
Also, it is nice to worry about, but I have to ask, why should I personally (as an example) have to worry about some kid somewhere else getting into programming? What if I am busy enough with my own problems? I think it is great that some people care about such things and take steps (establish special courses, conferences, advertisements, sponsorships and what not), but I don't think it should be expected from everyone.
> Well somebody had to be the first, though? And if it is just about seeing famous people in the media, why not get over yourself and admire somebody who has a different race or gender than you and follow in their steps?
Because not being part of the majority can make it feel as though you do not belong in a given career or sphere of human endeavor. Is that really so hard to grasp?
As I said, when many of "us" started, it wasn't yet the cool thing to do either. No, I don't understand what you are trying to say? What ARE you actually thinking when you make your career choices? Do you really think "I probably won't get a promotion because I am black(?), so in the long run I'll probably make more money as a garbage man? OK, garbage man it is..."?
I mean, I'll spontaneously zero in on that one argument: suppose people of race/gender x are known to make less money in a given career than people of another gender/race. Does that really explain why there would be less of those people in the given profession? Seems to me that for that to be true, there would have to be other professions where the disadvantaged people would earn more.
Is that really the case for IT? As a black(?) guy, are there other (legal) professions where you are likely to make more money than if you would go into IT? Presumably discrimination would range across all jobs (even white garbage men might make more money than black garbage men), so it should be cancelled out as a reason for choosing a career.
Sorry if I don't understand you, but when I got my first computer I was 12. I really wasn't thinking about my career. All I knew was that I liked computer games and that it was cool that I could make the computer do things (actually make things appear on the TV). How would your gender or race change your reaction in the same situation? I really don't get it. And by the way, at the time the computer games of the day were Pong and Pacman, so nothing violent that would drive away girls.
Edit: sorry for my extreme examples (garbage men), I just like to use ridiculous examples to make things clear but often people take that the wrong way. I mean I use them for the sake of logic, not to offend.
> As I said, when many of "us" started, it wasn't yet the cool thing to do either. No, I don't understand what you are trying to say?
No, you clearly don't understand anything that anybody who doesn't share your experiences is trying to say about this subject. This isn't about "coolness".
This is about whether or not something even seems like it's a possibility for someone. When I wanted to be in software, growing up, I didn't question whether or not it was something that "someone like me" could do, because everyone I ever saw, in magazines or books or on TV, was already like me. When I told relatives and strangers alike what I wanted to be when I grew up, they didn't discourage me or tell me that "people like me" couldn't be programmers. They didn't tell me that programming was a job for the other gender and that I was being silly for wanting to violate norms; they were supportive and encouraging, because everybody they knew of in software was like me.
Women grow up today, in 2012, being steered away from software because it "isn't for girls". Black kids grow up today, in 2012, being told that software isn't for people like them. White boys are statistically bought their own computer much earlier than minorities or girls, because it's seen by people as a logical career to encourage them in, thereby perpetuating the structural disadvantages that gave rise to the white male programmer as "norm" in the first place.
And every damn time someone dares broach the subject and advocate for putting a more diverse public face on the field so that it might actually stop being such a toxic monoculture, the white male majority roles its eyes and complains that they haven't experienced any of the problems that minorities are experiencing in the field, that they wouldn't have even noticed that a speaker line-up at a major conference was all just like them.
Of course you wouldn't have noticed that. That's the privilege that comes with being in the majority.
You went from "there are no role models" to "being actively told that you are not made out for x". Of course I understand the latter. This article was about a conference where by accident no minority group ended up on the speakers list. That is not the same thing as telling minorities "no, you can't do that".
But sorry, I am a white male, so I guess my very existence tells every woman and non-white person on the planet that they can not be a programmer? That just doesn't make sense. It's not my fault that black parents tell their kids not to go into computing, or that parents in general discourage girls to use computers.
I repeatedly said in my comments that I understand the statistical likelihood of people being less exposed to computers in their youth. But of course, you didn't read that. You only read what you wanted to read, which is "hey presto, here is another one I can vent my accumulated rage to".
Thank god people like you understand so much. You make the world a better place.
Also, who exactly tells black kids computing isn't for them? Any citations? The media? Parents? Gang members? Peers? Teachers? They really do that, they actively say "computers are not for you"?
> But sorry, I am a white male, so I guess my very existence tells every woman and non-white person on the planet that they can not be a programmer? That just doesn't make sense. It's not my fault that black parents tell their kids not to go into computing, or that parents in general discourage girls to use computers.
You're personalizing this as an attack on you when it's nothing of the sort. Nobody is claiming that anything is your fault. Unclench.
All anybody is saying here is that it'd be nice if, in addition to you and me and every other white male with a similar upbringing, there were a visible number of people of other people with dissimilar backgrounds to serve as inspiration to other groups of people. And that takes some effort on the part of community leaders and conference organizers to actually try contacting some of the brilliant speakers out there who come from diverse backgrounds, instead of just reaching out to a bunch of people like them and then throwing their hands in the air and hijacking the narrative with cries of tokenism when nobody is calling for anything of the sort.
You're a frequent, angry voice in gender-related discussions on HN. You really need to walk away from the computer and start asking yourself some hard questions about why it is that people talking about this issue is making you so angry and defensive when it is in no way, shape, or form an attack on you.
> Also, who exactly tells black kids computing isn't for them? Any citations? The media? Parents? Gang members? Peers? Teachers? They really do that, they actively say "computers are not for you"?
Yes. Yes to all of the above. People really say that. All of those groups actually send that message to kids. If you really don't understand how systemic this is, why do you feel so strongly correct in your opinions? Danilocampos gave his account. Another in mentioned briefly here: http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/11/tech/innovation/black-tech-ent... . There was a linked blog post on HN not too long ago of a black woman giving her account of how she came to be in the industry, and the push-back she received from her father, who didn't feel it was a sensible career for someone like her. I cannot for the life of me manipulate the search function into turning it up for me, though.
I don't think BritRuby had to be cancelled because "it would be nice to have more diversity". Of course this is an attack - and since I am a white male, it is also an attack on me.
I would actually welcome more diversity, I just don't think people should be blamed for not making the extra effort. It's nice that some people have figured out how to attract women to IT, and I am sure more and more people will learn from them. In the meantime, the people who don't know how to do it yet are not evil, they just were more concerned about other things.
And I am sorry, but laws that prefer a specific gender or race just seem unfair to me (that is what is bein pushed in Europe), so that makes me angry.
As for black parents and so on discouraging their kids to go into IT: how about educating those parents then, instead of blaming "white males"?
The problem is many of them take it as a personal attack, as evident by the comments here, and they can't even see how that is the problem.
I'm really proud of some of the comments like yours, danilocampos', and msbarnett's. It's just a shame you're being met with the same crap most of these conversations have in the programming community.
Of course it is an attack. A conference was shut down. If in the future all conferences have to make an effort for diversity, it is a tax on all of us - so it is an attack. If somebody gets my job because they are female or black, it is an attack. If I get blamed for not making an extra inclusive effort, it is an attack.
Actually I think what makes me angry is that notion that white men have handed everything to them on a plate. That is very far from reality, and dismisses a lot of human experience. Life is much more complicated than the height of your paycheck.
(I'm going to take your disrespectful sarcasm for the challenges of my career at face value.)
It's funny you say that.
Despite the fact that all my talents were related to computers and technology, I never thought to pursue an actual career there. I did briefly, when I was 12, but as time went on, it looked less and less practical because:
My mom had no opportunities to interact with people in that industry and knew nothing of technology herself, so there was no clear path to my making a career of it.
With no one in tech I could point to whose life background seemed similar to my own, I had no confidence I could forge such a path on my own.
Eventually I did forge that path and got where I needed to be. But how nice it would have been to align my education properly with my career direction. How nice it would have been to see some hispanic people in a more obvious, prominent position to assure me there was a place for me there. How nice it would have been to ease into this career with internships instead of credit card debt. But that's not the way it is. And that's okay. I'm doing great now. But I want to make sure it's better for the next guy.
My parents weren't in IT either. I just went through high school like any other kid. I only decided in the last minute to then go to university to actually study maths.
Sure, it would have been nicer to be surrounded by math people, but I think you overstate the challenge you face just because your parents were not in IT.
It is normal for kids to not have a lot of confidence in all sorts of things. That is why you get to be kid for quite a while before you have to make serious decisions about your life.
Sure, it would be nicer for some things to work in another way. I am very interested in how to properly support kids. But I think you overstate the factor of race in your case.
Actually, just a theory, but I think one problem of racism is that people who are discriminated against end up attributing more of their problems to their race than what is actually true. "Boss didn't trust my opinion? Must be because I am a woman" - but perhaps she was just new at the company so the boss preferred to ask somebody he knows he can already trust. And so on...
Actually you most likely started because someone you liked or admired, were friends with, were inspired by, or simply thought was cool, was doing it.
Do you have any evidence to back that up? Most people I know who program started because they were fascinated by it. Certainly when I started coding on my C64 I didn't know anyone else who programmed. Not everything has to be social.
I know of a handful of non white male programmers who are vocal and prominent members of the community, they exist, but they are hugely in the minority. That is the problem, what you see at conferences is a manifestation of THAT problem.
I do not know the organizers at this conference, but I know people who have been put in a similar situation, even when as organizers they are non white males. For example, Rebecca Murphy getting accused of sexism when she organizes a conference. Even when she has done way more for the cause then the people calling for her head.
As a conference organizer, you ARE put in the position of either finding token minorities, or facing a backlash. Who talks at a conf is based on who submits talks. If you end up with a situation where you have no submissions from minorities, or going on merit, the few minority submissions don't really make the cut, what do you do? It sucks for the organizers, and it sucks for the people who are asked to speak, since they never know if it is based on merit, or based on the fact that they aren't white men.
I agree that it is easier to envision yourself in a role if you have role models to look up to, but I don't agree that its mandatory. The counter example is sports, it stayed white until the strictures were removed and then became talent driven. The goal of a sports team is to win games which is a wonderfully crisp way of prioritizing recruiting.
The goal of startups (and a lot of companies) is to ship code and so talented people get hired regardless of their race, religion, or sexual orientation. In fact tech has something of a reputation for hiring "weirdos" as really talented technical folks are valued even if society at large discriminates against them. Just as true for the LGBT folks as it is for the non-white folks.
So the barrier to entry for becoming a Ruby star is essentially zero, laptop and a free AWS instance. And the market is demonstrably talent driven not 'class' driven.
You will have a hard time trying to convince me that the lack of non-white guy talent/leadership in the Ruby community has anything to do with race.
There aren't that many Ruby (or Python) programmers compared to say Java, PHP, or C++. There are even less Ruby programmers who want to make a 30-60 minute presentation on Ruby, let alone have the time to travel to some city in the UK. When you add a requirement for race in addition to skill, experience, and motivation; at this time you're probably not going to get anyone.
The main reason people go to programming conferences is mainly all about what's being specifically presented. Most people in tech don't care about ethnic group; they care about results. As someone else already posted, even when programmers go to see someone; it's really really rare that they even know what they look like unless their last name gives it away.
Star Trek references and all I have a feeling you will like this keynote from YAPC::NA 2012, "Perl: The Next Generation". Like he says, demographic diversity is the canary in the coal mine.
You couldn't be more right but I still don't see how it makes shutting down Brit Ruby okay. White guys like me have white privilege and though white dudes like me sometimes know this intellectually it's easy to forget because no one is reminding us of it. So yeah, you're right about every last thing you said but you didn't really address this particular conference.
There are ways to go about this sort of thing and while the issue deserves attention and the situation needs to be addressed, shutting down a conference over it doesn't do anyone any good. I don't think its really an issue of minorities being excluded so much as is it an issue of minorities not being included. There's a subtle difference.
When you're white, and you're male, technology (as a career field) is pretty accessible. And here's why. You can open up a newspaper or a tech blog or whatever, and many of the major important people in the photos staring back at you basically look like you. And that's nice, because you can be reassured that someone with your background and origins has a place in technology.
If you're not male, or not white, you have to look a bit harder. Sometimes a lot harder, indeed, to find people who both look like you and are doing what you want to be doing professionally.
Now, you'll give me an argument that looks just shouldn't matter. That we should look at people's minds and ideas, not their skin color, in evaluating their contributions.
And while I'm sure such an ideal feels reassuring – it's bunk in this context.
Diversity of "race" is really a proxy for diversity of background, experience and origins. For maximizing the varieties of life story represented.
It's useful to do this because diversity of experience leads to diversity of solutions. Diversity also breeds further diversity, as people with wildly different backgrounds feel more welcome into the fold.
So when we see people helping to lead a community, and some of those people aren't like the majority, that's encouraging. It says that even though a given person is "different" from the norm, they are welcome, they may be successful.
Star Trek is lauded for this reason. Actor Nichelle Nichols was thinking of leaving the show. None other than Dr. Martin Luther King implored her to remain – he believed a black professional woman on television would be a crucial role model for young people. (In her childhood, Whoopi Goldberg is said to have screamed, "Hey Mom! Look! There's a black woman on the TV and she ain't no maid!")
And you may argue, well, why should diversity matter? Let some people do some stuff and other people do others. And I'll tell you that position, on top of being lazy, opens us up to many missed opportunities. In technology, we want as many different sorts of humans as possible all working on our hard problems. If STEM is a country club for white guys, that leaves out a huge chunk of the population who might otherwise make great contributions.
One last thing. When you say stuff like "Wull, shucks, what were they supposed to do? Find a token [non-white-male] to fill the spot?" you make it sound like you don't believe there are any people but white guys with useful things to say on the subject of the conference. Careful with that.