Random Thoughts Because My Brain Is Cluttered (Pt. 1)

Maybe I should go draw instead

I’ve started a lot of articles over the past year, only to stop halfway and not work on them anymore. Trying to focus on one thing is tough. Editing is tough. Not being able to include the graphics that I want is tough.

I haven’t been able to concentrate much at all lately. But there are so many things that I want to talk about. I want to write a zine, maybe, but I don’t know where to start. Mistakes feel so permanent, and it feels like I have to get it all right on the first try.

Equality, Equity, and Abolition

This is a graphic that has gone around a ton, which some people dislike. I think there are valid criticisms of it that I won’t get into here. But I do think it’s a decently good way of understanding equality versus equity versus liberation (or the term I like to also use these days is “abolition”). Equality is giving everyone one box to stand on, but this doesn’t necessarily solve the problem at hand, which is everyone trying to see over the fence. Equity is leveling the playing field — giving everyone the ability and the means to participate (in the system) and see over the fence. Whereas abolition is removing the fence to begin with. In the work that you do, you have to ask yourself which model you’re working towards and contributing to.

A lot of people these days talk about equity and abolition interchangeably, and there are some overlaps, but they’re different. A lot of people talk about being abolitionists, but this can’t happen unless you’re willing to remove that fence. A lot of people only want to lower the fence or try to buy boxes for more people to stand on, which isn’t sustainable or scalable. Survival within the system is only meant to be a stopgap — a temporary solution — until we can get rid of the system entirely.

Diversity in Tech (and Most Things, Really)

We should be leading with joy, not duty. What I mean by this is, a lot of people who work in diversity see it as a necessity or a responsibility for other underrepresented peoples to enter that field. As an educator who worked in the diversity in tech space, I saw so many people who said things along the lines of “you have to join tech because there aren’t many other people who look like you in it, and you need to be here to make a difference.” This puts the weight of the task on the people who aren’t represented. This is a duty-driven reason for joining tech, instead of showing folks how they can find joy in it. We have to acknowledge that not everyone finds tech enjoyable, and we should be okay with that. The fact that so many people do not put joy first betrays the fact that their diversity initiatives are just tools created by the system to trap more people within that system. To lure people into abusive and toxic environments. The fact that it feels necessary for the work to involve getting Black and Brown folks, esp women and non-binary folks, into tech shows that it’s more about the duties and the roles and the numbers than about the actual people themselves.

Diversity is most often not equity work, in my opinion. Just getting more people into a space doesn’t mean they have better conditions in that space, especially if they are still rendered powerless. Increased representation does not guarantee a change in power, if the individuals in that space are unable to come together and if they simply do not have the means to challenge those in power. And even then, all we’re doing is bringing people into a system that is broken to begin with. It’s not enough to try to address the failures of capitalism by telling poor folks to get tech jobs. The very systems and structures that keep people poor are still going to be there. Bringing more people into the system is so often the opposite of what needs to be done. And it makes it harder to get people out.

I have more to say and write about, like on consent in tech systems and algorithmic bias and objectivity (or lack thereof) in programming but I can’t seem to concentrate on anything at the moment. So for now, I’ll just leave this post as-is. I don’t think these were written very well, and I have so much more nuance that I want to mention for each. But that will be for another time.