Drupal Voices 100: Jack Aponte on Diversity, Power and Privilege in Open Source Communities | Lullabot

Jack identifies as a gender queer person of color and talks a bit about the culture shock felt by minorities when attending DrupalCon, which is largely white, largely male and largely cisgendered.

The social aspect is a huge aspect of Drupal, and Jack talks about whether or not Drupal can be considered a pure doacracy when the people that make up the Drupal community are bringing in a wide range of power and privilege from their everyday lives.

The social aspect of Drupal: DrupalCon can be an intimidating experience- it makes it very clear where [diversity for non-white, non-male lacks].

Short lines at the women's rest room is a funny joke, but it's the only place where sexism works in our favor.

What would we do with the data if we were tracking? [On trans etc in gender field.]

Paraphrased conclusion: Check your assumptions about people you meet, where they come from. ... Check your own privilege-- your race, gender, physical ability. ... Start to think outside your own experiences, when people say they are offended, drop your defenses a little, and try to understand another's point of view.

[My own liberal mother felt this was unproductive complaining ('so, you feel different: work on what you're there for'). Not sure how to communicate the stark reality of extremely few black and brown people, and not many women, though maybe our quota of and antagonism toward raising issues of 'maybe we have a problem' in any form, but we do have to work on our message, maybe be more specific about examples of unpleasantness that needs to be addressed and how people can help, and more focused on working toward justice in Drupal and out.]