It was a fruitful, encouraging, and yet painful weekend at this past Falling Leaves Jam when it comes to diversity. A conversation about diversity revealed many difficult truths about where we’re at as a community in our thinking and actions on diversity, particularly on race. In short: where we’re at is better than we’ve been, but we’ve got a long way to go.
The encouraging thing is, there were many folks who were both horrified by the state of our community, and, I think/hope, energized to do more about it. So I thought it would be good to start pulling together some of my previous writings on diversity & race in CI, as well as write down some of my current thoughts, to give folks some reading material to assist their thinking, talking, and evangelizing on these topics.
Here are two articles to get you started:
- What you can do to promote diversity in CI. Written in late 2013, it still holds up pretty well today… unfortunately. I’m afraid my suggestions have not taken the CI world by storm, and still some of these fairly basic ideas are not standard practice. But note that the diversity scholarship I proposed eventually ended up being the Earthdance Diversity Scholarship in 2014.
- Unicorns, or why this picture moves me. Some reactions to the first published photo I have ever seen of two people of color dancing CI together.
Over the next few weeks, or perhaps less, I plan to write a few more articles about CI and diversity. As I do so, I’ll hyperlink them below.
- Why diversity? The case for increasing diversity in CI.
- How to start a diversity scholarship. Analysis and tips on creating a diversity scholarship for your jam, from three years of the Earthdance Diversity Scholarship.
- Why aren’t there any black people in the room? Some thoughts on why racial diversity in CI has been so slow in coming.
- What you can do to promote racial diversity in CI. Big and small actions you can take.
This is a lot, and I should be able to get to it all… but feel free to harangue me a bit if it’s been a while since I wrote one. Post a encouraging or nagging comment below.