Re: Debian supports pridemonth?
On 7/1/19 9:10 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:
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).
In my case, it might be very well the cultural difference but I learn
and grow every day, so it is always welcome to get nice responses at
topics that might confuse people.
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.
Companies are doing that lately, imo, because of peer pressure to do it
as they could also loose profit in it. Not saying all companies do (and
most small-medium tech companies seem to do because they really want)
but many do and that is what brought to creation of People's Pride Month
while we are at it. Sorry my ignorance, does Dropbox write blog posts
about such celebrations and change its logo? Also Debian is a worldwide
community, so we are not in office where people could invest time to
prepare celebrations which would be super visible to others. That said,
yes, we can do better blogging.
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.
I work remotely almost my entire life, so I can't really speak about it
but as country, except major religious events for nations that are
majority here, you are correct, we don't. This indeed is cultural things
as we are not very multicultural from where I come sadly so celebrating
anything else wouldn't take an echo.
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.
These sections and your next mail (which was absolutely superior in
response, I just love reading your mails) made me clearly realize your
points. While I never said points other raised, not did I imply that we
need "White Male" celebration, it did resonate with me what not doing
one or doing other or even taking neutral path and avoiding entirely
this would mean. Maybe I am still getting it wrong, but now I support
the view that we need to more prominently show that we are a happy place
and that we love having diversity as community (and Debian, like it or
not, has grown over being a small hobby software project).
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.)
Again, I think they are doing this mostly for peer pressure, the same
way in past companies that maybe would do right thing, didn't because
political climate was different.
Anyway, thanks Russ and others on good replies to this topic. Indeed, my
opinion changed and I would be very happy to see more prominent
celebrations of minorities and marginalized groups of people so we can
level at least Debian for them while entire society comes to that point.
Cheers,
Z
P.S. I just today realized that Debian Diversity logo is the same one
used for celebrating Pride Month, that is actually very nice
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