[Diversite] Alex Gaynor: Why I support diversity

[François Boulogne <fboulogne AT sciunto.org>]

Bonjour,

L'article ci-dessous me semble être un témoignage intéressant. Il fait
aussi mention d'une organisation sur le sujet.

Librement.
François.

-------------

Alex Gaynor: Why I support diversity
<http://alexgaynor.net/2013/aug/28/why-i-support-diversity/>

I get asked from time to time why I care about diversity in the
communities I'm a part of, particularly the Django, Python, and the
broader software development and open source community.

There's a lot of good answers. The simplest one, and the one I imagine
just about everyone can get behind: diverse groups perform better at
creative tasks. A group composed of people from different backgrounds
will do better work than a homogeneous group.

But that's not the main reason I care. I care because anyone who knows
how to read some statistics knows that it's ridiculous that I'm where I
am today. I have a very comfortable job and life, many great friends,
and the opportunity to travel and to spend my time on the things I care
about. And that's obscenely anomalous for a high school dropout like me.

All of that opportunity is because when I showed up to some open source
communities no one cared that I was a high school dropout, they just
cared about the fact that I seemed to be interested, wanted to help, and
wanted to learn. I particularly benefited from the stereotype of white
dropouts, which is considerably more charitable than (for example) the
stereotype of African American dropouts.

Unfortunately, our communities aren't universally welcoming, aren't
universally nice, and aren't universally thoughtful and caring. Not
everyone has the same first experience I did. In particular people who
don't look like me, aren't white males, disproportionately don't have
this positive experience. But everyone ought to. (This is to say nothing
of the fact that I had more access to computers at a younger age then
most people.)

That's why I care. Because I benefited from so much, and many aren't
able to.

This is why I support the Ada Initiative. I've had the opportunity to
see their work up close twice. Once, as a participant in Ada Camp San
Francisco's Allies Track. And a second time in getting their advice in
writing the Code of Conduct for the Django community. They're doing
fantastic work to support more diversity, and more welcoming communities.

Right now they're raising funds to support their operations for the next
year, if you accord to, I hope you'll donate: http://supportada.org