Yes, people say horrible things when they think they are in an environment that will tolerate saying those things. But I'm going to give the management of whatever hypothetical org of which we're speaking the benefit of the doubt and say they don't want to start that way. I hope that, for new organizations who have yet to establish their own culture, that tendency is a projection of expectations for the industry as a whole. My advice is for people who are serious about being fair and equitable in their dealings with diverse groups of people. If we don't have that baseline, I can't help them.
But with that baseline often comes a person who is specifically trying to be nice to others and not hurt other peoples feelings. This is, unfortunately, not going to keep bad actors from getting in and ruining the soup. Thus the need to be firm and resolute. One must establish early, often, and unequivocally that the org is not going to be party to exclusionary behavior.
It's easy to say, "you have to increase diversity", but that's a goal, not a plan. Being a part of the "majority", we're not going to be able to increase diversity by ourselves. That's rather much the whole point of the idea of "diversity", that the homogenous group can't solve all of the problems for all of the people of the world. That rather much includes our own damn problems and the problems of our own damn industry.
For example, take these "<TargetedDemographic>CanCode Campz" things. I'd like to see numbers about them. To me, they've always seemed very forced. I've also heard first-hand complaints from said people in the target demo that the concept is perceived as patronizing. I applaud the organizers for putting in the effort, and their heart is definitely in the right place, but I wonder if they aren't doing more harm than good.
It almost sounds like a chicken-or-egg paradox, that I'm suggesting you can't foster diversity without already having diversity, but that itself is a symptom of the problem. There are very dedicated people out there who are trying to work and trying to be accepted. I've seen first-hand how easy it is for one, single, isolated incident to drive away the very people who would help introduce our organization to a broader audience. We have to stop being blind to the people who are already here.
All that it takes is to not let the vocal, hopefully-minority-of-bad-actors drive good people away. All that it takes is the shocking, controversial policy of just treating "them" not like "them"s.
Comments
Yes, people say horrible things when they think they are in an environment that will tolerate saying those things. But I'm going to give the management of whatever hypothetical org of which we're speaking the benefit of the doubt and say they don't want to start that way. I hope that, for new organizations who have yet to establish their own culture, that tendency is a projection of expectations for the industry as a whole. My advice is for people who are serious about being fair and equitable in their dealings with diverse groups of people. If we don't have that baseline, I can't help them.
But with that baseline often comes a person who is specifically trying to be nice to others and not hurt other peoples feelings. This is, unfortunately, not going to keep bad actors from getting in and ruining the soup. Thus the need to be firm and resolute. One must establish early, often, and unequivocally that the org is not going to be party to exclusionary behavior.
It's easy to say, "you have to increase diversity", but that's a goal, not a plan. Being a part of the "majority", we're not going to be able to increase diversity by ourselves. That's rather much the whole point of the idea of "diversity", that the homogenous group can't solve all of the problems for all of the people of the world. That rather much includes our own damn problems and the problems of our own damn industry.
For example, take these "<TargetedDemographic>CanCode Campz" things. I'd like to see numbers about them. To me, they've always seemed very forced. I've also heard first-hand complaints from said people in the target demo that the concept is perceived as patronizing. I applaud the organizers for putting in the effort, and their heart is definitely in the right place, but I wonder if they aren't doing more harm than good.
It almost sounds like a chicken-or-egg paradox, that I'm suggesting you can't foster diversity without already having diversity, but that itself is a symptom of the problem. There are very dedicated people out there who are trying to work and trying to be accepted. I've seen first-hand how easy it is for one, single, isolated incident to drive away the very people who would help introduce our organization to a broader audience. We have to stop being blind to the people who are already here.
All that it takes is to not let the vocal, hopefully-minority-of-bad-actors drive good people away. All that it takes is the shocking, controversial policy of just treating "them" not like "them"s.