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Comment by bennyg | Hacker News Reader

It may be worth asking why, but I don't think it's an actual problem, and especially not a problem that needs action to make the distribution of races/genders more fair. White men aren't preventing people from getting into open source software. Just the opposite actually - a few white men have made it extremely easy for people to get into OSS.

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Being a 19-year-old black software engineer, from a "current reality" POV, I can say that acadien's observation is definitely spot-on. However, I can also say that it seems things are getting much much better. Just a little under 3 years ago, I'd attend a conference with 300, 500, or even 500+ attendees, and would EASILY count the amount of black folks on a pair of hands (yes) and the ladies on 2-3 pair of hands. This isn't necessarily the case anymore (it's still kind of a problem though). Also, a majority of the "white men" programmers I know in the industry are very welcoming and helpful in this sense, so I wouldn't blame "white men" since that's just too general, and quite frankly, wrong, for the most part. Now that that's out of the way, THERE ARE those "white men" who are not so welcoming and aren't afraid to show it either. I couldn't even tell you the amount of times I've been offended by such folks. There's even one conference I went to where I was literally stopped on my way to grab lunch and randomly requested to go to security to be searched while EVERYONE ELSE was enjoying the sessions and meals. I was searched, I went to bathroom and cried for a while (yes, I admit it), and immediately headed home afterwards. Which conference ... well, I digress. The point I'm trying to make here is that we shouldn't be blaming folks in a general sense, but instead find those folks who do have such behavior and try to help them change.

great post. i think the main cause is economic / structural, but the underlying problem may well be exacerbated by bad behaviour of individuals. code4lib have an anti-harassment problem to deal with the behavioural problems (https://github.com/code4lib/antiharassment-policy) I've never been to their conferences so couldn't say how helpful it has been for them. as for dealing with the structural issues, that's a bigger problem without any clear answers that I'm aware of.

Hi Jonathan. I would love to know which conference this was.

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