Why I walked away from a tech + diversity event crying over a white man

Pathetic, I know. Here goes the story:

I went to an event today. It was called Tech + Ethics + Diversity. It addressed the issue of how lack of diversity in technology harms products as well as society and progress.

We learned how everyday products we use promote racism (e.g. snapchat filters with Asian faces), how they can trigger trauma (e.g. google maps took down a feature that told people how many mini-cupcakes they’d burn in calories if they chose to walk, I mean seriously WTF Google, I’ll eat however many cupcakes I want) and how we perpetuate stereotypes with super-biased algorithms (e.g. tagging images of kitchens with “women” and not men). Infuriating.

It was a diverse room. I saw both women and men, people of colour, people with different abilities and shapes. Pretty diverse for a tech event.

After the first speaker finishes, a man at the back raises a question. Let’s just call him Dave. He says the question is directed more at all of us in the audience and not just the speaker:

“As a CIS gendered straight white man what can I do?”

Now… to all not-so-familiar-with feminism people the white straight man (CIS=someone’s gender identity is the same as the sex they were assigned at birth) is often the personified target for what many call ‘feminist rage’.

Back to this excellent question.

“As a CIS gendered straight white man what can I do?”

I liked his question. I liked it because it shows he is curious how to be part of the solution. I liked it because by asking what he can do from his position of power, he demonstrates he’s an ally.

An ally supports those who are marginalised, discriminated against, ignored, disadvantaged, and who can benefit from being included by someone with more privilege. For example, I can be an ally for women with disabilities by making an event I run wheelchair-accessible. If you were straight, you can be an ally by going to gay pride to demonstrate for LGBTQ rights.

Back to the story. During the break I walk over, introduce myself briefly and say “I have a few suggestions for you!” At this stage I genuinely believe he is also passionate about diversity and wants to talk about actual things we can put into action.

I wish I had recorded the conversation. What followed were a few attempts on my end to suggest actionable ideas, e.g. getting people ‘in the room’, hiring diverse teams, insisting on representation.

I didn’t feel he wanted to listen much.

The tidbits I do remember:

Hiring people that will contribute to diversity in teams won’t fix the problem alone he claimed. Well I’ll tell you what, Dave, it’s a damn good place to start.

He also argued, if I remember right, that it’s not nice for a person to join a homogenous team (and be a minority I assume). My non-techies readers: this means rooms full of developers that tend to be (somewhat geeky?) white men between 20 and 40. So we don’t want to put minorities in the discomfort of working with white men?

1. That’s a real shitty reason to hire another white man
2. I’ve been that person in the room. Multiple times. As an outsider (a woman in tech) I’m used to that shit. Give me a voice and a safe space, and I’ll make your product shine. Being an outsider and all. Also — let us make that decision to apply for that job. Not you.

When I said I’ve been that person, you were not interested to hear anything about it. In fact, I wasn’t asked a single question by you over the whole course of our conversation. Ways that signal listening + empathy.

For example you could ask: “What do you mean?” “Can you explain that?” “Why?” “Why not?” “Why do you think that?” “Tell me about… “ None of that.

I admit I didn’t ask you anything either. But I wasn’t the one in the room asking what I can do to help. If you point out your privilege in a room and ask for input, you will have to listen. If you just want validation that you’re not the mean straight white guy in the room, I’m sorry we don’t have time for that.

You ended with stating that:

“You know, it was more a rhetorical question.”

Are you serious?

“It was a rhetorical question” when you out yourself as a CIS-gendered straight white man asking how to help to promote diversity, and then not wanting to listen?

There were like 150 people in the room. Let me break the news: It’s not the time to ask rhetorical questions. I think it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

Also — don’t tell me you’re upset I’m writing this. I gave you ample time and space to apologise and make things right when I came back a second time, and spoke these words:

Hey Dave, I want to give you some feedback. I actually walked away from our previous conversation and was quite upset. I don’t think it’s cool that you ask us for what you can do as a straight white man, and when I come to you with actual suggestions, I don’t get the feeling you really want to hear anything about this. And I find it especially offensive that you say that you asking what you can do is a rhetorical question.

The thing that makes me upset is that you know you screwed up, but you are not willing to say, “sorry, dude, yeah maybe that wasn’t cool, how can we fix it”. You keep wanting the last word.

As always I don’t want to just rant, but actually provide some practical tips.

Here’s what I think you should do, Dave:

• Go to meetups where you are the outsider, e.g. Women Who Code in Vancouver, ask questions and listen, nothing else.
• Donate money to Women Who Code, Girls Who Code, Black Girls Who Code, and code.org.
• Follow all of them on twitter.
• Volunteer your time to teach a group that’s less privileged than you how to write awesome code. Think teaching code in a prison, a refugee community or a women’s shelter, how awesome would that be?

Looking at who you follow on twitter at least lets me think you may not be doing these things. If you are, great.

And yes — I walked away because any second longer and I would have cried out of anger. I cried on the way out and I cried on the train reflecting on my experience.

The fact that I have this conversation at an event labelled Tech + Diversity in a city like Vancouver, in a venue that is announced to be a ‘safe space’ and is harassment free, and YOU are probably one of the loudest voices in the room, is heartbreaking.

As an activist I’m only just finding my voice. Heck, this is the first time I’m calling someone out on their bullshit publicly.

By the way, I didn’t know anyone in the room. I am 10 years your junior. I’m a woman. English is sort of my second language. And I still said something.

And if you didn’t take me seriously or didn’t like me because of my red checkered shoes with eggs and bacon on them, well, then I don’t know. How can we not agree on eggs & bacon??

But back to action. Here’s a couple of ideas of things we can all do:

• Look around you in the room when you make decisions, are there people in the room that are not like you? People that look different, have different backgrounds? If not, why? Can you include them more?
• When you host events, are they accessible to everyone? Think about people who may not hear about them because of the way you choose to market; think about the venue, is it wheelchair-accessible; do you need someone to do sign language?
• Hire people that are not like you. If you don’t know how to recruit a more diverse team, I don’t have the answers either, but literally typing into google “how to build a diverse team” is a great place to start
• Insist on representation: e.g. if you’re invited to be in a panel speaking, refuse to be part of it if it only consists of men, or white people or whatever mainstream in the space. (remember the room full of old white men signing bills on abortion? We literally had zero representation in the room as women. How is this possible in 2017?)
• Examine your language: do you call women girls? Do you call a white man “man” and a black man “black man”? Do you make assumptions about people?
• When you build products build them with a diverse team; if your design sprint lacks diversity, maybe invite strangers — people love to volunteer their advice - or invite actual users (revolutionary right?); if you don’t have money or time to do that, at least make a checklist of things you may forget, e.g. how would an ESL user/a caregiver/immigrant/old person interact with your product?
• Demand diversity practice from leadership. Unconscious bias training is a great way to start. Learn and practice ally skills.
• Amplify the voices in the industry, follow people of colour / people from other parts of the world / the misfits etc. that are in your field and hear what they have to say.

And lastly, call out people on their bullshit. Say no to lip service. Demand actions. Hold people accountable for walking the talk. Don’t be scared to raise your voice.

Yes it’s uncomfortable.

Yes it’s emotional.

And yes, you may just end up writing a whole article on it.

— —

I’m human and a privileged white woman. If I screwed anything up in this article, please tell me and I’ll do my best to correct it and learn from it.

Follow me on facebook or twitter. (I literally just discovered twitter).

If you are interested in taking our first (free!) feminist course on the f school which I’m founding, then sign up here: thefschool.com.

Edit 1+2: Thanks to my awesome friends Ben & Lauren for reaching out and correcting my definition of CIS. It’s now been updated.

Edit 3: Dave has since apologised, which I wholeheartedly appreciate. I am compassionate towards him, too, and I know it’s not easy to have these uncomfortable conversations, so thumbs up for that.

Edit 4: Thanks to another ally pointing out he replied to my tweet on twitter vs. tweeting out publicly which is far less visible. So far, he also has not reacted to my tweet in response.

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