>my response reflected my unconscious biases; and the negative impact of my tweets was amplified by the fact that I, a white, Western, male CEO of a key company in the Maker community, publicly questioned a young, female, self-employed Chinese maker.
Fair point about unconscious bias. It's difficult as we are creatures of habit and purposely always look for patterns, mostly to our advantage but sometimes to our disadvantage. It's tough. I have seen countless times though that gender based unconscious bias is present in reality, more times than not against males - although rarely reported (schools, Universities and work places).
The next point about how being a CEO for a company in a large engineering community and then publicly discrediting another person is massively impacting on the person being attacked. In general it seems to be that the more powerful your voice, the more you should think about what you say. Even then, powerless individuals can quickly be amplified for the purpose of being attacked or held up as a leader of some opinion.
The next part grates. What has the combination of "white", "Western" and "male" got to do with the apology? Would the CEO's voice be any less effective if it was from an equally positioned black, African female? I would hope not. I think this could equally have been any other person of this power apologizing for doing little to no research. How did we get into the position where people are apologizing for features they are unable to control, somehow meaning they can or can't take part in some opinion/discussion? I bet the answer to that can't be made without discriminating.
And looking at the actions being taken in response, it doesn't make much sense:
>* With permission from Naomi, we will feature Naomi and her work on the cover of the next issue of Make: along with a full-length story about her work.
>* We will invite her and help her obtain a VISA to a USA Maker Faire in 2018, covering her travel and expenses.
>* We will be publishing a diversity audit of Make: as a company and our properties, and will be setting goals to drive progress on these issues.
>* We will be assembling advisory boards to work with our Maker Faire organizers to ensure our events are representative of our entire community. We will invite Naomi to be part of any advisory board for events in China.
Why is there now going to be a diversity audit of Make? What happened to question the diversity of Make and how does that prevent this public discrediting from occurring again? Surely a way more effective preventative measure would be to just turn off the CEO's Twitter account and stop any one person representative of Make from having unfiltered access to large audiences.
On the other hand, featuring her work is a good gesture to counteract the incorrect public statement made. The advisory board position is over the top and again, seems to suggest that there is something wrong with the Make community when it was the actions of the CEO.
Edit: Bad newline formatting for bullet points.