[NCSG-Discuss] On Diversity and Discrimination

[Carl Smith]

Lighten up Andrew,

Satire is another and funny way of making a point.  But more rationally, 
if you had an important task of which you were uncertain of the 
methodology, would you not seek the most qualified individual to assist 
you without regard to anything other than talent?

Lou

On 2/1/2013 1:50 AM, Andrew A. Adams wrote:
> Marc,
>
> You seem to have missed the context of the discussion of diversity. It arose
> because of discussions of the GNSO endorsements of candidates for the ATRT2
> team. While Avri, Dan, myself and others have engaged in a general discussion
> of diversity, the issue I was posting on and that the others taking this
> question seriously seemed to me to be posting on, is the question of required
> diversity in bodies with specific authority or whose outputs are likely to be
> used to strongly and formally influence piolicy-making. Voluntary membership
> organisations such as NCUC/NCSG may also form an echo-chamber and self-aware
> people interested in equality, justice and fairness may seek to put some
> resources into outreach to disproportionately encourage new members from
> under-represented groups.
>
> Your discussion about intelligence levels, US political leanings and US
> sports teams are rather off-the-point and in fact represent a classic
> misdirection argument about any form of attempting to improve diversity of
> representation.
>
> If you haven't already seen it, I heartily recommend John Scalzi's post on
> "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is":
>
> http://tinyurl.com/cngqk4h
>
> On this list we have good gender balance, some reasonable representation from
> developing countries and some other geographic diversity (though I think the
> only Japan-based members of the list are immigrant SWMs from the UK or US,
> but I might be mis-remembering, and I don't recall seeing any Korean-based
> posters - FYI Korea and Japan have some of the highest Internet penetration
> rates in the world, but are very unengaged in Internet governance fora). But
> we're just one constituency in ICANN and many of the others seem far less
> diverse and even with our diversity, it would be easy for the formal bodies
> of ICANN to end up unrepresentative, and therefore producing poorer policies.
>
> Forgive me for being concerned about such issues, but as an information
> ethicist, looking at the mechanisms creating and perpetuating inequality in
> information services is one of my research interests.
>
>
>