Hi everyone, I wanted to reply here to acknowledge the feedback on this thread. I hear those of you who are uncomfortable with the banner, and I appreciate the honest and mostly constructive discussion here.
As the Rust team said well, tech is and will always be political, not in the sense of political parties but in the sense of affecting societal decisions about how opportunities and resources are allocated. The actions we take or decide not to take unavoidably affect who has the opportunity to learn Go, not to mention the opportunities that working as a Go developer can bring. Last November when Go turned 10 I wrote <https://blog.golang.org/10years> that “what we’re most proud of about Go is not a well-designed feature or a clever bit of code but the positive impact Go has had in so many people’s lives.” We must not be blind to the fact that the impact on people’s lives is not equally distributed – not as widely available as it can or should be. Through actions like adopting a Code of Conduct and supporting organizations like GoBridge, the Go team and the Go community have for years promoted efforts to broaden Go’s reach and stand up for all gophers – and I will quote from the Code of Conduct here – “regardless of gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disabilities, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, ethnicity, nationality, race, age, religion, or similar personal characteristics.” The banner on our sites is a continuation of that effort, recognizing that at this moment: - There are problems and inequities affecting gophers that extend far beyond what we can reach with things like a Code of Conduct or additional training opportunities. - There is a societal reckoning going on here in the United States, of a scale that hasn’t happened in over 50 years, that may lead to real change for many current gophers and hopefully many more future gophers. - It is important to lend our voices to these efforts, both to support our community members and to help influence those societal decisions I mentioned. Not speaking up, like not adopting a Code of Conduct, is a way of saying everything is fine the way it is. Everything is not fine. - Gophers may want to help but not know where to start. Donating to the Equal Justice Initiative is only one possible way, but it is a concrete specific action. (As others pointed out, EJI is a well-respected non-profit not affiliated with a U.S. political party.) I gladly credit other open source projects, including React, Express, and OpenTelemetry, for leading the way and inspiring us on the Go team to add this banner. We are happy to join them in making this important statement and specific suggestion. To people who object to the banner as too focused on the United States: Google and Go both started here, nearly all of the Go team is here, a substantial number of Go community members live here, and many others travel here for conferences or other reasons. The situation here affects gophers worldwide. To people who think technology can be apolitical or neutral: let me say that when I started working on Go over a decade ago I thought the same thing. If you’re not the one being discriminated against – if the playing field is tilted in your favor – it is very easy not to notice that fact. If you are interested in an honest, critical examination of that belief, let me recommend reading this essay by Peggy McIntosh <https://nationalseedproject.org/Key-SEED-Texts/white-privilege-unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack> and then spending the next week building a similar list of examples specific to the tech industry. Posting this banner on our web sites, affirming that Black Lives Matter and suggesting one possible concrete action to help, is almost literally the least we can do in support of the (far too few) Black gophers in our community. The discussion on this list has at times gotten a little heated, but I hope that it prompts at least a few gophers reading along to become more aware of these real problems and hopefully to think about ways to help make change. If so, the banner is working as intended. Best, Russ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "golang-nuts" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to golang-nuts+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/golang-nuts/CAA8EjDQwFiFGNvty5tUTt%2BTYg7sgFrin5T%3DaDP%2B6qPx82qD%3DhQ%40mail.gmail.com.
