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Comment by Adrock | Hacker News Reader

What if our pronouns were racial instead of gendered? I'd have a problem with the white versions being used in all my technical documentation.

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Exactly. But if you go around and look at any tech company, the majority of people are white males. I think changing that actual situation is more important than changing documentation and making yourself feel good about having done something.

If you really want to change things, you can write to your Senator or suchlike about racial inequality you have observed, or immigration reform. That is much harder than just grepping a codebase and submitting a PR -- but if you do it, you might actually effect change (and as a person of colour, I would be much more grateful to you, if you are from a more privileged class).

You can do both. And if you do change the documentation, it's not necessarily about making yourself feel good. It can also be about creating a welcoming environment or a host of other things. I'm not attributing the basest motivations to your statements, so please don't do that to mine.

Your suggestion is to do something that will hopefully have some sort of macroscopic impact. That's great and should be done, but it doesn't mean that the microscopic impacts don't matter. I'm concerned about the actual small set of women that I work with on a daily basis not being marginalized.

Of course, doing something to effect greater change is 'better' than doing something that effects lesser change, but that doesn't invalidate doing the thing that effects lesser change. Lesser change is better than no change.

No, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

You grep your codebase of choice for 'him', s/him/them, fire off a pull request, and think "Nice! I really did a lot for the advancement of minorities in tech today!", and then go out for drinks with your mostly white coworkers, where you discuss diversity in the workplace with a straight face.

It's a start. It costs you very little. Do it!

Posting on hacker news an starting a flame war might cost a lot though.

I take it you don't think there's much of a connection between language and thought. Changing something at the most basic level can have important repercussion. Some prefer this kind of intervention, rather than deal with a political power structure.

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