How to tell people they’re racist. The one good thing I got out of reading through the bullshit being directed at the LessConf organizers.
I was just perusing some of the tweets on the @lessconf twitter stream and started backing up through some of the conversations. Jeebus, it’s crazy-town out there.
Several people called the guys at Less out for the fact that the speaker lineup for LessConf is all-male and all-white. Additional pile-ons ensued when Allan responded to the criticism. He’s all defensive now, he really is a racist, etc., ad nauseam.
One notable blogger even went so far as to take issue with the fact that an all-female conference Allan recommended as an alternative was only $99 versus LessConf’s $600 (actually currently $402), implying that Allan was making some kind of back-handed value judgement on the other conference.
I’d be pretty fucking defensive and aggressive back at folks, too, if they called me out in public as a racist over something that only in the most superficial and thinly-construed interpretation might indicate such.
For one thing, you are only seeing the end result of their speaker acquisition. How do you know whether they did, or did not, invite women and/or people of different ethnic backgrounds to speak? Is it possible they did, and those folks didn’t accept, or couldn’t make it? Regardless of whether they did or did not, why is it their responsibility to present an ethnically diverse lineup at their conference, when the event is paid for by them and their completely voluntary attendees?
Suppose, for shits and giggles, they did initially invite 21 speakers, half white/male and the other half non-white/non-male, and one east-Asian tranny nutter that dresses like Abe Lincoln. Further, suppose all 10 non-white/male as well as Tranny Abe declined. Why should there be some additional burden on the conference organizers to go seek out additional non-white/male participants in place of one or more of the folks who accepted the initial invitation? Does it matter if they only initially invited 5 non-white/male (and Tranny Abe)? Does it matter if it was only 2? It doesn’t matter, because the complaint is bullshit.
I attended this conference last year and it was great. It presented a diversity of ideas, and this year looks to be more of the same, and I’m fuck-all looking forward to it, and these douche-nozzles aren’t going to ruin my high about getting on the road to Atlanta tomorrow. I couldn’t give two shits if the person on stage talking is black, indian, asian, male, female, post-operative, twelve years old, or whiter than Caspar Weinberger - I just want to learn something.
I don’t know these guys super-well, but I’ve had many many personal, face-to-face interactions with them both, at local user group meetings and other conferences, as well as a couple of years of Twitter conversations. They’re good guys. And this type of public name-calling is pure undeserved bullshit.
