Let me get this out of the way: I don’t like Adria Richards. I think I have good reason to not like Adria Richards. So I should be feeling some major Schadenfreude right now. Instead, though, I think what’s unfolded in the developer community in recent days has been a tragedy.
Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost | Amanda Blum
Notice how almost all the comments, even those in favor of Adria Richards, many of them (as the one I am quoting here), from White women defending Richards are all about disciplining the uppity Black woman.
They don’t like her tone. Her vocal antics are improper. She didn’t deserve to be fired but… It always boils down to it: the misbehaved Black woman should have known better. Even ostensibly feminist blogs are giving space to such opinions.
This is what happens when WoC do not play by the rules of patriarchal White Supremacy: the racist version of “slut had it coming”. If only she had not been so outspoken, if only she didn’t expose stuff she doesn’t like… if only she had been docile.
Anyone trying to unpack this disaster from the perspective of sexism in the tech industry, I’m afraid they are missing the point entirely; as usual, it is about the racist sexism in the tech (and non tech) world. Adria Richards is now its latest victim.
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