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Actually, selecting speakers without regard to gender or race and ending up with 100% white guys (which is easily possible, since they are very overrepresented in the field) isn't racist or sexist, whereas selecting people specifically based on these traits would be racist and sexist, by definition.

I think diversity is a worthwhile goal for a conference, but we shouldn't throw around these labels so freely (and incorrectly).

Listen, white guy, the simplest counter argument is that white guys just aren't 100% of the field. They're probably <60-70% of the field.

So yeah, you do end up with a problem if somehow, conference after conference, we only field white guys.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_the_United_Kin... says that in 2001, >90% of the people in the UK were white.

Got any sources for your <60-70% in the Ruby community?

Yeah, 51% of the population are also women.

Now you are trolling. Or do you have a source for that? It seems highly unlikely that a programming community would have such a high percentage of women.

I would link to wikipedia for some verification of that feeling but all I could fine were biased feminist articles on that topic.

For posterity: I edited my comment to clarify my statement prior to seeing this comment.

Half of all people are women. !caucasians and !males are probably at least 30% of the industry, especially when you consider how minorities are overrepresented.

Since we're not citing any source, I'll say that population X is at least Y% of the industry.

> It seems highly unlikely that a programming community would have such a high percentage of women.

This is the problem with the programming community we need to fix.

You are saying that greater than 40% of the developers in GB are not white males. What are you basing this on?

GB is only about 10% non-white and last statistic I saw on gender was that only 1.5% of people participating on open source projects (world wide) were female.

To be strictly fair, I live in Toronto so that may skew my own perspectives - my graduating Computer Science class was definitely <60% white.

You should calm down and read what I actually wrote.

"So yeah, you do end up with a problem if somehow, conference after conference, we only field white guys."

I agree with you. But in this case, racist and sexist are not appropriate terms unless you believe that speakers were actually excluded based on race or gender.

Also, when you begin a post that is meant to argue against discrimination and prejudice with "Listen, white guy", it might be time to step away from the keyboard for awhile...

I did read what you wrote. You just spelled out a very common fallacy.

It is racist, and/or sexist. It's just a kind of wholesale discrimination, visavis the retail, personalized kind of racism/sexism we're more accustomed to.

It's not intentionally evil, there may not be any malice behind it, but it's still… discriminatory.

As white dudes, it's especially hard to see as we're largely unaffected by it, blah blah privilege, etc.

How do you propose to fix things? Selecting speakers that are not as preferred by the selection committee simply because of being a minority race (minority in the context of the community in question)? i.e. the committee ranks all speaker applications, figures out the necessary demographics to mirror the conference's targeted community, and then allocates speaker slots for each demographic to the best speakers who are in that demographic?

If you artificially make minorities (based on the community's demographics) a majority on the selection committee, in the hope they will select speakers that more closely mirror the larger community, and if they pick more speakers who are members of minority groups, how do you know they aren't being subconsciously racist/reverse-racist in exactly the same way you're complaining about whites/males being racist?

How do you objectively evaluate the race-blind quality of a set of potential speakers if your claim is that everyone on any possible selection committee is potentially subconsciously biased?

What if you make an effort to select speakers that mirror the demographics of the larger community, and conference attendees rate this new anti-racist conference lower than they rated the last ("racist") one? Is this demographics equality campaign to be pursued at the expense of attendees' perceived value of the conference?

>How do you propose to fix things?

Make sure you pick two or three females for at least every eight to seven males. Aim for as high a mix as you can.

>how do you know they aren't being subconsciously racist/reverse-racist in exactly the same way you're complaining about whites/males being racist?

That's easy; there's no such thing as 'reverse racism'. There's discrimination, and anyone can be discriminated against. Furthermore, few if any conferences are organized in the matter you described. There's no selection committee. Only 1-to-3 people are involved picking speakers.

>How do you objectively evaluate the race-blind quality of a set of potential speakers if your claim is that everyone on any possible selection committee is potentially subconsciously biased?

You misunderstand my claim. My claim isn't that people are subconsciously biased, my claim is conference after conference filled with white dudes is a sign the conference speakers aren't doing their jobs of presenting their audiences with the widest range of interesting ideas.

>Is this demographics equality campaign to be pursued at the expense of attendees' perceived value of the conference?

This assumes that your pool of potential speakers is only slightly larger than the number of speaker slots. There are fewer potential female speakers, but this does not automatically mean that you can't provide a full slate of A+ speakers - only that you have to work a little harder at it.

See: http://2012.jsconf.eu/2012/09/17/beating-the-odds-how-we-got... and http://2012.jsconf.eu/2012/09/17/beating-the-odds-how-we-got...

So the problem is the underrepresented groups aren't sending in talk proposals unless they get personal encouragement.

That's tragic, and in that case I agree that underrepresentation is a problem, but I don't agree that organizers are discriminating if they don't make that extra personal effort to reach out to potential presenters from underrepresented groups.

I agree there should ideally be more encouragement, but I don't think it should be required for conference organizers to do that, to avoid allegations of discrimination.

>I agree there should ideally be more encouragement, but I don't think it should be required for conference organizers to do that, to avoid allegations of discrimination.

So, it gets more complicated than that.

Most conferences can't fill their rosters via just calls for proposals. Instead, it is the director of speakers that has to individually invite speakers to attend. As a result, they tend to be dominated by people they know, which tend to be white men.

The only way to escape being dominated by your social network is to invest the extra energy.

I don't think any conference should be allowed to have proceed without a single black person, Eskimo, female or badger on the speak list.

Here are a few shows that were also not diverse enough for my liking: London Boat show - too many white males http://www.londonboatshow.com/2013/whats_on/attractions__eve...

British Educational Training and Technology Show - not a single person with a double barrel name :( http://www.bettshow.com/Conferences-Features

The baby show - only females speaking. This is COMPLETELY unacceptable. This show should NOT go ahead. Refunds all around http://www.thebabyshow.co.uk/excel/new-parent/for-baby

Professional Beauty- not enough males http://www.professionalbeauty.co.uk/page.cfm/Link=149/nocach...

/sarcasm

Actually, your idea of racism is precisely inverted. Racism isn't just about calling people names and hurting their feelings, racism also includes a systemic exclusion of a group. And if we end up with 100% white guys time and time again that is racism, again, whether you like it or not.

Selecting qualified underrepresented people would not be racist or sexist. Ending up with white men all the time would be. And we should throw these labels around, this is something that should be discussed and addressed in variety of ways.

This is a ridiculous statement. If you want to be non-racist, diversity shouldn't even be a word in your vocabulary. The definition of racist is not 'have at least one of each in your audience'. It is 'do not discriminate based on race'.

I won't accept any accusation of racism or sexism until I see a message from a minority that says, 'I have been disrespected on the count of me being a minority at this conference, and the organisation did nothing to make sure this would not happen again'.

There being 100% white guys is not a problem. It is a problem when a black woman goes there, and she feels disrespected because of her sex or race.

Tell me how a conference that is only attended by white men perpetuates racism? It just doesn't make sense, you should listen to Morgan Freeman more.

If you have a goal of "diversity" that implies that you are going to treat people differently depending on their race and gender. Race and gender becomes part of the selection criteria. Isn't that pretty much the definition of racism and sexism?

A system where the speakers are just randomly chosen from a pool of people who submitted papers would definitely not be racist or sexist, but it probably wouldn't meet your definition of diversity. (Probably wouldn't make for a very good conference either.)

A fair system is one where race and sex do not influence the selection criteria. It cannot have diversity listed as a goal. If it is a goal then you have created a racist, sexist system for selecting who gets to speak.

I'm sorry for whoever downvoted you for disagreeing with them. Normally we're better than that.

I'm on the fence for the kind of thinking you suggest.

On one hand, the phenomenon you describe does happen -- it's what MLK referred to as "the mythical concept of time." That if an un(der)represented group just waits patiently, they'll be alright. The idea that they'll get rights when the courts decide so, or that they'll get a decent education when they test well enough, or that they'll get reasonable jobs when they can afford to commute there.

I think people get upset about these observations because they think the observer is attributing malice. "Racist" is a strong term that elicits an emotional response -- people thinking of the Deep South in the 50s. I don't think that the British Ruby Conference planned on an all-white all-male conference, and I don't think any reasonable person believes that they explicitly denied presenters because they were black, or hispanic, or gay, etc.

But it's also true that year after year we see this. To be transparent, as a white male, I sympathize with meritocratic thinking ("the best person should get the job"). And I understand why people get upset over affirmative action-like policies. But what we're doing now isn't working, and I don't know the answer.

What I do know is that both sides need to be able to acknowledge that there are reasonable views and goals across the board in this debate. The emotional language that comes with this is polarizing, and people are defensive, and people are indignant, etc. We need to discuss this reasonably, and this is a forum that should be able to, but frequently doesn't.

Year after year, new people start running conferences. And year after year, people have to point out that running a conference while paying no attention to diversity will (a) ensure that your conference fails to represent whatever diversity already exists in your community, and (b) do nothing to encourage further diversity in your community. It's unsurprising that the people who've been making these arguments over that time get frustrated - they've had to keep on making them in the face of wave after wave of naive conference organiser.

Sometimes an emotional response is justified. Sometimes rational discussion gets you nowhere. Sometimes it really is just time for people to say that they are sick of this bullshit and they aren't going to take it any more. In this case, the conference organisers clearly weren't acting in bad faith - but nor had they put even the most cursory effort into making themselves aware of the issue. That shouldn't be considered acceptable behaviour these days, and if rational discourse hasn't led to it being considered unacceptable then maybe emotional responses will do.

I'm not disagreeing with your first paragraph -- that's what I was trying to acknowledge in my original post.

And I think there are many people who share the viewpoint of your second paragraph. Personally I don't think I do -- compromise is rarely made in the name of strong emotion. But I understand where these feelings come from. After all, for every MLK there is a Malcolm X. Maybe it's a combination of these forces that facilitates change. I have no idea, and can't speak about much else other than the fact that there are reasonable goals on both sides of this debate. We should be working towards them.

Oh, it's definitely a combination of the two that engenders change. If the calm, reasoned position is the only one expressed, the compromise position will never reach it. You need an extreme position in order to shift public perception to the point where the calm, reasoned position is the compromise position.

I doubt that. The current US political system is (or at least appear to be) super devided and unable to get anything done. But does it lack emotional arguments? It doesn't seem so.

In addition you are arguing in front of a forum where people value rational speech and good arguments. Throwing a tantrum is not the way to get anything done here.

Finally you seem to assume that there is some way to convince your opponents. I agree that it seems likely, but how is it certain? And what gives you the right to go of the rails and decide what should be considered acceptable behaviour? That seems strongly opposed to the culture of freedom that has permated the hacker culture since it first escaped the wrath of the operators back in the early sixties.

I downvoted him/her because the post is hyperbolical nonsense.

Correlation is not causation. It is perfectly possible that the best papers (by whatever metric) were submitted by white guys. So if that was the case, and they selected the best papers then they would end up with 100% white guys.

If you make diversity a goal, then you potentially reduce the resulting quality. A technological conference should care about the papers' quality and nothing else. I would not mind if it would be 40% transsexuals, 30% furries in pony dresses and 30% carribean housewifes because to me, that is completely irrelevant and not something I care about.

I have no idea about this conference, ruby or anything else.

I was one of the people that downvoted "thisduck" because of the naivety of his/her statement. The statement was so logically simple that it is axiomatic, but none of it was necessarily based on evidence.

On the other hand, I upvoted your comment because it is a more reasoned argument. There's no right or wrong answer when someone charges another person with racism, unless it is overwhelmingly obvious (re: your 1950s example).

Charging the BritRuby organizers with racism is a harsh indictment, and I would feel profoundly hurt if that charge was levelled against me. Now that the charge is out there against BritRuby, what are they to do about it? They can't "show their work" in choosing the speakers, because it acknowledges that they might have been racist to begin with, and nobody will do that. If they stay quiet, they have to contend with people like 'thisduck'.

@apawloski you make the right call that one needs to step back and reassess the situation from an objective standpoint before using the word 'racism'. Sometimes admitting that you don't know the answer is the first step to actually getting the conversation started.

Lastly there's a voice in the back of my head saying that, based on the way people are saying that having x% white people at a conference is sign of racism[1], I'm not sure if I should ever submit an application to speak. I'm "white", but I don't want to be charged with being racist or taking a 'non-white's' speaker slot because I happened to want to speak at a conference. Now, what do I do?

It's now my turn to be naive: I honestly didn't think my skin colour and willingness to share information with others would be seen as a sign of racism.

[1] where x >= .... what's the right number? is it 50%, 80%, 1%?

So what you are arguing is essentially 'if you are not with us, you are against the terrorists?'

The only reason that strategy sometimes works (and it does by no means work in all cases, just see what happened to Pompey the Great when he tried it) is that there is some kind of punishment for those who are against you.

If you want to win people over, don't be combative. Stand firm on your belief but hand over olive branch after olive branch -- people that will give people plenty of opertunities to change their minds and will leave a favourable impression, which will be useful later.

What you have just done is the opposite of helping your cause.