I'm entering today more refreshed after taking a break last night. I'm trying to remain optimistic. There is one more day of the main conference I'm attending. There are many opportunities for growth.
The keynote speaker was Cecilia Aragon. She's a latina woman who was a Olympic Aerobatic Pilot before getting her PhD and becoming a professor.
I really enjoyed her talk, especially about her early life. She talked about how both her parents have thick accents, which had her placed in slower reading and writing classes in school. She once spent extra time writing an essay in order to be very precise and articulate. Her teachers accused her of plagiarism because "someone like her couldn't have written that". From this she was drawn to math, science, and computing. She talked a lot about her personal fears and insecurities. She talked about how she used to be afraid of heights and now she's a pilot doing tricks in a plane at 250mph. I didn't take any notes here, I wanted to just experience her talk.
I went to the workshop titled Increasing Diversity in Computing: Sharing of Good Practices. I was expecting more of a workshop type situation where we'd get advice on practices and things we can implement. Instead, there was an introductory video where each organization was featured. Then there were break out rooms where you could meet each organization and ask questions. The organizations were:
It was really disappointing to once again, see no representations for LGBTQ+ centered organizations. However, many of these I had not heard of before, so maybe they have LGBTQ+ initiatives within their organizations.
When break out rooms opened, I started with CRA-WP. I am really concerned about graduate school, so I felt that they would be the best group to help me there. When I joined, I talked with the representative about my situation and how many fellowships and funding opportunities that talk about diversity don't apply to me since the LGBTQ+ is consistently overlooked. The representative didn't have any answers. The fellowship on their website states:
NSF seeks candidates from a broad array of backgrounds and strongly encourages women, African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, Native Pacific Islanders, and persons with disabilities to apply.
So while it is encouraged their list of underrepresented groups in STEM apply, everyone is eligible. This means I'm allowed to apply even as a "white man". The representative was really uneducated about LGBTQ+ issues as a whole and recommended I go to the NCWIT break out room, since they might be more involved with gender issues. She also recommended I attend Grace Hopper, as they might have more LGBTQ+ resources. She gave me her email and told me to contact her about their grad cohort. I'll do that when I'm done here today.
So I moved onto the NCWIT break out room. I explained my overarching grad school
situation and then how I was visiting after talking with CRA-WP. Once again,
they didn't have much for LGBTQ+ people as a whole. The representative from
NCWIT did recommend I check out
The NCWIT Collegiate Award honors the outstanding computing accomplishments of undergraduate and graduate women, genderqueer, or non-binary students.
While this is more inclusive, it shows a frequent frustration of mine. Commonly, women and nonbinary identities are grouped together to create a community of "not-men". The term "womxn" is frequently used here to create a space for women while "crossing-out" men. This causes issues in practice because we're now creating a "men vs not-men" mentality. At first there appears to be no issue. Cisgender men have dominated positions of power. The keyword here is "cisgender". Transgender and nonbinary men have not openly upheld those same power structures. Transgender and nonbinary men can play a role in those structures by closeting themselves, but by disclosing their identities, they too are put in discriminatory situations alongside women and nonbinary people. Not only does the "not-men" mentality exclude trans and nonbinary men who are also hurt by the cis male centric power structures, but it includes nonbinary people with women. Nonbinary people exist outside of the traditional gender binary. Some nonbinary people identify with a specific third gender, or a mix of male and female, or just femininity, or just masculinity, or absolutely no gender at all, or things I didn't even mention. So by stating "women and nonbinary", we're grouping nonbinary people with a binary gender. Some nonbinary people are comfortable with this, but many are not as it directly contradicts their identity. In practice, these "women and nonbinary" groups tend to exclude AMAB[1] nonbinary people, nonbinary people who reject femininity, and nonbinary people who are comfortable with masculinity. So coming back to the topic at hand, this award shows that it's for women and some LGBTQ+ people, but not all.
The NCWIT representative also recommended I look into The Last Mile Education Fund. They're a group who gives grants to people experiencing financial hardship that poses a threat to their education. In the five minutes I've scrolled through their site, it appears they have three grants. Emergency Mini-Grants which are rapid grants for short term obstacles. There's Bridge Grants which help students overcome "potentially catastrophic financial hurdles such as a car repair, medical expense, loss of employment, and required devices or equipment for your major." They also can be used for career development opportunities like applications, conferences, research opportunities, and more. Then there are the large Last Mile Grants which are for tuition and degree completion. I'm really lucky I heard about this. I've been sharing it with my friends with financial struggles. I'll put in some applications later.
As the event finished, I did get the following message from a participant:
Thank you for so openly sharing your story! You are doing great things in light of life's hurdles
That was nice to hear.
The final workshop I attended was titled A Seat At The Table: Candid Conversation on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The speaker was incredibly charismatic. He was very engaging. He was also very open about the exact discrimination and hate he's experienced as a Black man.
I took a lot of notes, but I'm not gonna copy all of them. There was a lot of redundant information, and especially towards the end he was rushing, so I couldn't take notes.
To start, he covered the importance of candid conversations. They give us the ability to turn a difficult conversation into a painless learning experience. They give us a chance to talk about topics that are meaningful to use and also to gain new perspectives. He followed it with the quote:
"Seek to understand before being understood"
Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
We also talked about the difference between equity and equality. Equality being everyone treated the same. Equity being everyone treated different based on their needs. The example always used is a graphic about a baseball game. Three people are trying to see a baseball game over a fence. The first is tall and can see over the fence without any help. The second and third are medium and short heights and cannot see over the fence. Equality is giving each person a 1 foot box to stand on. The tall person can still see over the fence just find. The medium height person can now see over the fence. The short person is still not tall enough to see over the fence. Equity would be giving the tall person no boxes to stand on, the medium height person one box, and the short person two boxes. Everyone can see over the fence based on the way we addressed each need individually. He also included another part of this graphic to demonstrate reality, where the tall person has many boxes, the medium height person has one, and the short person is standing in a hole. I've also seen a fourth version where there's no boxes given to anyone. Instead of giving people boxes, the fence was removed. Now everyone can see the game without obstacle. This one was titled liberation, and represented the removal of the systemic barrier.
He then had four people read a dialogue out loud. No one was participating so I volunteered first. Other people ended up volunteering. I was the only person to mention my pronouns.
Diversity asks "Who's in the room?"
Equity responds "Who is trying to get in the room but can't? Who's presence in the room is under constant threat of safety or removal?"
Inclusion asks "Have everyone's ideas been heard?"
Justice responds "Whose ideas won't be taken as seriously because they're not in the majority"
Diversity asks "How many more of each marginalized group do we have this year compared to last year?"
Equity responds "What conditions have we created to maintain the existing majority?"
Inclusion asks "Is this environment safe for everyone to belong?"
Justice responds "Whose safety is being sacrificed and minimized to allow others to be comfortable maintaining dehumanizing roles?"
The dialogue does a good job explaining justice's role in diversity, equity, and inclusion. One attendee mentioned "Good presentation. However, the exercise was not inclusive." I privately messaged them thanking them for speaking up and asked them to elaborate. They didn't respond. I believe it was because the exercise required us to read from the slides being screen shared, and that visually impaired people who use screen readers would not have been able to participate.
We covered how stereotypes in media create a unconscious bias in our brains. These biases, whether we are aware of them or not, lead to judgements. We see people and make assumptions based on our unconscious biases, whether we intend to or not. If we don't actively acknowledge and work against these biases and judgements, they turn into behaviors and discrimination. We need to acknowledge we all have unconscious biases, learn what they are, understand them, and start to self correct.
We covered the difference between microaggressions and macroaggressions. A microaggression is a comment or action that unintentionally expresses a prejudiced attitude against someone based on their minority status. Macroaggressions are verbal and physical assaults. These are intentional actions taken against someone based on their minority status.
So then, we answered some questions as a group. I'll leave these as a bulleted list. These questions were focused specifically around racism against Black people in America. I've rephrased some of them to be more universal about having candid conversations. Others I've left as is. The lessons still apply.
How do I lead the candid conversation with other people so I can understand their feelings and viewpoints?
How do you teach people to be more receptive to a candid conversation?
What happens when non-people of color look at their community's Anti-Blackness[2]?
How do you deal with White Fragility[3]?
What can we do?
This quote was on a slide, so I wrote it down. It's really been applicable to my experiences at this conference.
Stop expecting others to act first. Be the one who makes a positive change. It starts with you.
I'm sad I missed the closing ceremony. My dog has been sick all day and was giving me issues. I'll do closing thoughts for the day, then probably tomorrow make a comprehensive final opinions post about the conference as a whole.
Today wasn't as emotionally draining as yesterday. I'm still disappointed there were no organizations based around LGBTQ+ inclusion during the Diversity Best Practices workshop. The organizations I spoke to didn't seem to have many resources, initiatives, or education on the LGBTQ+ community, which added insult to injury. However, I did gain valuable advice and resources there, which I'm appreciative of. I will admit I felt better about today, even if I was disappointed by what was missing.
[1]: Assigned Male At Birth (adj) : Describes someone whose original birth certificate states "Male"
[2]: Anti-Black (adj) : Resistant or antagonistic to Black people, their values or their objectives Dictionary.com Definition
[3]: White-Fragility (noun) : Discomfort and defensiveness on the part of a white person when confronted by information about racial inequality and injustice Lexico Definition