Re: Debian supports pridemonth?
Zlatan Todoric <zlatan@riseup.net> writes:
> In my opinion, and as Russ explained about becoming political is
> basically unavoidable, I would be actually up for celebrating things
> that can (should?) be worldwide celebrated - community celebrating Pride
> Month is in my opinion a worldwide community. Celebrating specific
> racial/national/religious things, I think that should be left out for
> multiple reasons: nations change through history and if you celebrate
> holiday of one nation, you can easily miss how it offends the other
> nation, same goes for race and religion.
> So LGQBT, Software Freedom, Universal Healthcare, Basic Income etc - yes
> (it affects all human kind)
> Hispanic/Black/Jewish/Green/Orange/Blue things - no, because they are
> specific to certain group and diversity statement is all-inclusive for
> that purpose, no need to pinpoint specific groups.
I wonder if this may be a cultural difference (and by saying that, I want
to stress that means that I think different members of the project will
arrive at different conclusions entirely in good faith, and there's no
real objective right or wrong).
For example, my employer (Dropbox, for what it's worth, but I think this
is common among a lot of our peer companies) celebrates Black, Hispanic,
and Asian and Pacific Islander months (and I'm pretty sure others that
aren't occuring to me), along with things like Diwali, Ramadan, and
Passover (and of course Christmas and Easter), all in different ways.
These are generally self-organized by employees for whom these events are
meaningful, they're entirely optional, and they focus on talking about
food, heritage, art, personal history, and other similar things that vary
in their specifics but unite us as humans. The point of this is to
recognize that people are different and bring those differences to the
workplace as part of their whole selves, people don't have to fit into a
single model or mold, and learning about other people and the things they
find meaningful is inherently interesting and broadens perspective and
helps us all work together more smoothly.
This is a fair amount of work (I don't know that Debian should try to
tackle that many events unless members of our community are asking), and
it does require a bit of effort to be thoughtful about how to organize
such events, but I think it's valuable. But that's my cultural
background; that's the sort of thing that I'm used to, so when it comes up
in the Debian context, that's the spirit in which I take it.
Other folks may have much different personal experiences and therefore may
take it in different ways. This may be something that's literally never
done in your workplaces or in your society, and thus something that seems
strange or unnecessary.
However, I *don't* think that saying we therefore shouldn't ever touch any
of these topics is either workable or wise. Like it or not, humans are
inherently political (political comes from the root word polis, or public
life, which is unavoidable whenever there is a public). For people coming
from a culture where this sort of acknowledgement is common, *not*
acknowledging someone's meaningful celebrations is *also* a political
statement, particularly if it's done because someone's culture is deemed
"controversial." There is no easy default action here; we're a large
enough project with a large enough community that we have to wrestle with
this in one way or another.
Anyway, personally I'd rather err on the side of *more* celebration of the
diversity of people in the Debian project, including noting meaningful
days and events for them, because I think it says something important
about our community. It says that we're a world-wide community of people
from a huge variety of backgrounds and interests, and that diversity is
also reflected in our huge diversity of packages and the universality of
our operating system.
> That said, I like celebrations (good way to find out about different
> cultures/things), so maybe, just maybe we could have these things still
> being issued by Publicity Team but with some specific Headline Tag like
> "Debian Diversity Celebration: Today we celebrate US Black Heritage" and
> then some text about its history etc - that way it would be informative
> and fun IMHO.
This is, for what it's worth, roughly what US corporations tend to do.
(Personally, I think we should always strive to be better than a typical
corporation, not being much of a personal fan of capitalism, but they do
spend a fair amount of time thinking about how to navigate these sorts of
things among large numbers of humans who are forced together by something
largely unrelated to their personal backgrounds.)
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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