On -isms in Tech- Spoiler alert I am not shocked.
Recently, I was talking to an old friend about my early love of coding. How I taught myself to write a butt ugly Angelfire website from scratch, a few other little coding things. How, ebullient I was when I was starting to learn these skills and working with them. That was quite a long time ago, I did not go into this angle of tech at the time because of one incident that showed me the face of the industry.
A friend of a friend got me an invitation to beginner/wanna be coders. It was for a brunch and networking type of thing. There were folks available to take on students, to be mentors, folks doing hiring and whatnot. Typical semi-professional thing. I remember being so excited, people told me that this that and the other company would love me, that this that and the other company would be into helping me develop my skills. I don’t know about y’all but, the idea of hanging out with other professional nerds, eating some bourgie food and drinking wine sounded awesome.
I arrived at the event, got my name tag and began to mingle. I recall seeing groups of “diverse” (Seattle’s version, lots of White folks, a few brown folks and me) people chatting and introducing themselves. I was the only Black person there and felt immediately very aware of this, that was not a new situation for me so I waded in. Not one person spoke to me for more than ten seconds. More than a few people gave me very uncomfortable stares then remembered to half heartedly introduce themselves, a few people spoke to me like I was a lost child who wandered into the event.
That had happened to me before as well. At that age (mind you this was more than a decade ago) I had more fortitude to try and trail blaze. I introduced myself, I asked questions. I smiled in the face of awkward stares and insensitive questions and statements. More than one White person was astonished that I, a mere negro had an interest in and some experience doing any kind of code. WOW, a few said you are so articulate. I withstood it with a smile. My experience with a very Seattle specific type of discomfort when Black people are present is long standing and always infuriating.
Until, I sat down to try and talk to a man from a company I was very interested in. He informed me that they were, “full on affirmative action hires.”
That was a first and it shut me down. It wasn’t the first time someone assumed I earned something through affirmative action. I’d heard it as young as when I took a reading test in elementary and scored quite high. I’ve heard people tap dance around it, qualify compliments on my intellect or ability to use English effectively with “for a minority” etc. Strangers have messaged me on various social media platforms to explain to me that I’ve been published or talked about only because I’m a Black person and therefore I’m obviously inferior at whatever thing and not possibly because I’m good at the thing.
In my day to day, I am in fact a technician who can do a lot of things. Over the years I’ve learned lots of stuff, some of it I use daily some I learned for fun. The one thing that has tied all of that technological learning together is how unwelcome and uncomfortable I am when even looking into making the switch from a general techy hobbyist to working in the tech industry.
When the news of the problematic (fucking terrible) memo at Google hit, I can’t say I was shocked. This behavior is something I’ve seen in my own industry, that I’ve heard everywhere. What I see is White men absolutely panicking that they are not the center of that world and using outdated, debunked science, a few social justice sounding buzzwords and voila, the most banal sexism and racism there is. Whenever White people feel vaguely threatened by anyone they feel is inferior for whatever reason, this is the response.
Sometimes it is a manifesto. Sometimes it is, trying to get WOC especially Black WOC fired from their jobs. I personally have been doxxed by people who fully believed that my work is dangerous. More than a few people have threatened to try and get me fired from my job because I publicly said and I quote, Fat people are people.” I know what retribution smells like and it smells like the tech industry.
The problem is not diversity. It is not that there are “scientific” or “biological” reasons why women and minorities aren’t “supposed” to be in tech. The problem is that telling Whiteness no or to tell Whiteness, especially cismale heterosexual White people no, or yo it’s not your turn- is always understood as a threat. It is always on the level of a personal attack.
When I say personal, I mean personal.
Not ideological, personal.
For instance, frequently when my work is published I places where I don’t control the comments, I’ll see things like, “Shannon (or The Author) is a cancer”, “Evil and pathetic” from my inbox as of 8/7/17, a scattering of misgendering, racial slurs and threats to “expose” me. Not because I sought them out but because I have the audacity to speak about something that is a cultural threat to all of us.
Now, the articles these have been in response to have not been emails directly to these people. They haven’t mentioned their names, I don’t –actually know- any of them and yet, when I say no Whiteness, they attack like cornered animals.
Someone asked me yesterday if I was as shocked as they were about the manifesto circulating at Google and my answer is no.
I am mildly surprised that Google fired that man, although as we all know he’ll be just fine.
I am mildly surprised that Google’s response was so lukewarm and did not drill down point by point why that manifesto was terrible.
For those of us who are in the undesirable category to men like the author of the manifesto, we’ve known all along. If you are surprised by the heavy misogyny and casual racism happening, I highly suggest seeking out POC, LGBTQIA, and other people who’ve not only been doing the work but who live it day to day.
Signed (as I have been referred to in messages today) your face,
Racist, cancerous, cuck, racism causing, feminism ruining, evil Black Person.
