Comment by azima | Hacker News Reader

Comment by azima | Hacker News Reader

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you're speaking from your experience which is fine and YMMV, but it's useful to listen to hers about how she feels. Discounting others' experiences doesn't help. She's talking about feeling excluded from tech as a woman of color because tech has made a priority to include more women speakers, but has completely ignored that there are women of color who are ignored. The industry thinking that they're"solving" diversity by increasing women, but ignoring women of color are only solving part of the problem. The main point I'm making is inclusion matters, in the workforce and at conferences. And the benefit of having people of color speaking is being exposed to experiences and P.O.V.s from people of color. There are studies that show that people of color or from various backgrounds are better problem solvers because of adversity they've had.

Also, using anecdotal evidence from your circle of friends who have had positive experiences is dismissive of others who haven't.

You know, I find it strange how I can't remember a single person complaining about lack of diversity who wasn't complaining only about their specific type of diversity.

Case in point: the author is, by her own admission, a black woman and complains about the part of her identity that is not well represented: her (black) skin.

There's something almost funny in asking people to care for one's situation when the speaker isn't even speaking at large: why isn't she also complaining about asian, native american, indian and how many others not being represented?

Because in America, your opinions are only valid as far as your credentials. For example, if you have dark skin, your opinions on black Americans are valid, if you're autistic, your opinions on mentally ill Americans are valid, if you're a computer, your opinions on American computers are valid, etc. It may be a flawed system, but it's better than slavery and feudalism, and it somewhat works to keep people's minds off the real issues, so it's all good.

Not sure if sarcasm or not, but it's REALLY hard to understand wha ankther races experiences without listening and people who listen without being dismissive/judgemental are exceptionally rare.

[Same poster as ohhimark, had forgotten my password]

Maybe so, but what I mean is that I (and presumably the people she is writing this for) are not black women. They're not indians, asians and many other things too of course (which is my point).

As an opinion piece (which I suppose it is), it's something interesting to think about. Yet, doesn't it say something about everyone of us if even minorities advocating for equal rights don't see the bigger picture and advocate for more than their specific situation?

It's a self-defeating argument in a way: the author is arguing that people are caring mostly for only one type of inequality… by decrying only their specific situation while making no mention of all the other types.

I guess what I am saying is that I wish the author would have framed her case as an example tying in to the general case.

When one gets to this point in their reasoning, perhaps they'd realize that we are resource-constrained and no matter what we do, we'll be "excluding" some categories.

And yet what I just wrote is too dismissive. I don't know what the best way to go about all this is, but it sure is very upsetting to be blamed, as part of the "dominant group", for not doing enough when the very people pointing the fingers seem to have similar biases towards minority groups they are not part of.

Then again, perhaps in this case they could have just called the event "inclusion for women" since that's what it's currently focused on.

Well yeah, she's obviously speaking from her position about something she sees and feels. Like most people, you're most aware of obstacles you face and less of others. She's fighting her fight. And obviously anyone reading that can apply that to other races/groups.

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