Thread by @ericadeefox

welcome to my TED Talk about how unsurprising the #gdistrike is, and how you can only address racism in tech organizations by addressing racism at tech at large. note: all of my experiences with @girldevelopit took place at @GDISeattle.

so, I stayed in Seattle for a while at the beginning of my programming education, in 2015. I'd attend @GDISeattle sort of "coffee & code" meetups because I was new in town *and* new in tech. I think I attended like one or two, but one situation really stuck out to me.

now, I'm a Midwestern girl. and I'm a girl who's spent my adulthood in a hardscrabble Rust Belt town at that. I'm used to microaggressions asking about our infrastructure, poverty, etc. I'm used to people assuming that tech was *so* *much* *safer* for me than Indiana, because...

how could it not be? it's super full of progressive middle-class lefty types who recognize their internal biases and have access to social resources. flaw one. but this has happened to me at least once at literally tech event I've attended outside Indiana.

anyway, sometime in like September 2015, I went to one of those coffee & code meetups, and there was another woc programmer and she was wearing this on her top.

oof I love it! I complimented her on it. there was a white woman sitting next to me and her immediate reaction was to correct its syntax. "ohhhh wouldn't it be written like this? ohhh" ok. sure.

let's overlook the message and have an opportunity to prove that Women Can Code Too™. this is why efforts to integrate gnc, trans, nonwhite, disabled, and other minorities in tech fail: because women have been told that we must act like powerful men in order to become powerful.

this same woman had been, like, going "Oh, I can't even imagine" when I was describing what life in Indiana was like, and responding to my discourse on gentrification with "but now I can finally afford this car, this apartment" etc.

uncomfortable stuff like this happens all the time in tech. when I presented at @WriteSpeakCode, which I'm not saying this to 🐸☕️ I'm just proving a point, the woman who introduced me mispronounced "Muncie", *after* previously giving a short talk on mispronouncing names.

tech is not an inclusive place for folks from marginalized backgrounds. therefore, we cannot adequately address these microaggressions nor the racism that quells people's careers or participation in tech orgs, without identifying oppression in the industry at large.

going remote and hiring without regional barriers. removing names and background checks and identifying info from resumes & CVs. scouting & promo at public high schools and community colleges, so that poor kids can network too.

I became an attrition statistic because I decided if I had to write another line of code ever again it would be my last. but some folks like me really love & miss writing code, they just can't take the industry. don't lose folks who love code.