Flippant Remarks about “What Your Culture Really Says”
I’ve been reading the work of @shanley—work like “What’s Wrong With @antirez’s Post on Sexism in IT”—and I can immediately tell that I don’t need to be writing carefully around her thinking. I sense an authenticity in her strength of character—whether the character is one designed for writing publically or actually hers in “real” life.
I wrote in “Why I failed to talk to Carl Franklin about “Race” in the IT (Information Technology) World…” that the prejudice against women in the IT workplace is almost identical to that of the racist aesthetic used to poison “minorities.” In “What Your Culture Really Says,” @shanley makes my point without really trying:
What your culture might actually be saying is… We have implemented a loosely coordinated social policy to ensure homogeneity in our workforce. We are able to reject qualified, diverse candidates on the grounds that they “aren’t a culture fit” while not having to examine what that means - and it might mean that we’re all white, mostly male, mostly college-educated, mostly young/unmarried, mostly binge drinkers, mostly from a similar work background. We tend to hire within our employees’ friend and social groups.
I am embarrassed for the self-described Black women and men of tech that I’ve encountered digitally over the years because I know that too many of these folks would not only fail to write like this in public—even under an assumed name like “The Corporate Negro”—but off the record they would fail to write or speak like this in relative privacy. How do I know that @shanley is not Black? Surprise me. I dare you.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure that @shanley is not Black.
What’s deeper here is that I am almost certain that @shanley and I would agree that most IT “cultures” are Lord-of-the-Flies boy’s clubs (you can even have a “diverse” boy’s club but everyone speaks with the same Valley-Girl, posh American, Metro-sexual accent, wearing that same Star Trek uniform with a goatee) and we would also agree that there is nothing “evil” about these clubs—until they start telling lies to themselves and others that they represent a “universal” view. They should be honest and self-realized about their cave-man frat-boy, ethnic, provincial shit. Who am I to say this? These are the words coming from a physics student out of UCSB. I’ve worked in astrophysics labs and some of the first personal computer labs for institutional education in the country. I’ve worked in multi-billion-dollar finance, pharmaceutical and entertainment companies. I’m not talking out of ignorance. I don’t have an Al-Sharpton perm cascading split ends over my eyes, giving me an over-simplified black-plastic view of the world.
I know that I am dealing with a bunch of assholes (regardless of color-of-skin) when it becomes clear to me that the bunch has no accurate, well-researched idea of how they are perceived by outsiders. When a group can respectfully and almost-joyfully imagine why people would not want to be in their group then that group has something actually going on in the realm of reality-touching… The key is that imaginative respect. In the world of IT we often prioritize artificial intelligence over organic intellection. When I strongly suspect that my “team leader” used to openly call his mother a “bitch”—to her face—then I know it’s only a matter of time before I’m no longer a “cultural fit” for the “universal” business team of hurray-for-everything…