I recognize at least some of the names on the attendance list there as people who don't, to the best of my knowledge, identify as being of African descent, so it doesn't appear to have been an event that excluded anyone. My guess would be that the "open to" bit is intended to bring in people who might otherwise feel they're not welcome if they're not specifically invited, more than it's intended to dis-invite people who already know they're always welcome at Wikimedia events. The phrasing might be a bit awkward, but most ways I can think of to express "...and seriously, we would very much like those of African descent to fully participate at and feel comfortable in this workshop" suffer from one tonal weakness or another. At the end of the day, I can't say I resent specifically inviting racial minorities to events any more than I would resent specifically inviting women to events; given our demographics, it's probably better to err on the side of not making minorities feel marginalized or like they're being treated like tokens, than it is to err on the side of making sure white males don't feel like there might be a space where they're not the center of things.
On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 11:25 AM, Neotarf neotarf@gmail.com wrote:
That's interesting:
"The workshops are open to all Afrodescendants including but not limited to individuals who self-identify as African, African-American, Afro-Latino, Biracial, Black, Black-American, Caribbean, Garifuna, Haitian or West Indian."
I've never seen editithons that exclude people before. I've been to a couple of black history events, and all were welcomed, although of course there was a very high proportion of African descent. Likewise, the women's editing events I have attended have been very welcoming to men, although as you would expect, there is a very high attendance level for women.
On Sat, Mar 21, 2015 at 12:37 PM, Carol Moore dc <carolmooredc@verizon.net
wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Wikipedia_Day_2015
Wikipedia Day NYC 2015 is a celebration and mini-conference for the project's 14th birthday,* to be held on Sunday March 22, 2015, hosted at Barnard College starting at 10:00 am, and also supported by Wikimedia New York City and fellow Free Culture Alliance NYC partners.
There are various events, sessions, talks, etc. Nothing women oriented but I do see involvement by a new NYC meetup group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/AfroCrowd"
Talk page hasn't even been opened yet to comment on its goal: "to increase the number of people of African Descent who actively partake in the Wikimedia and free knowledge, culture and software movements." I guess meetups targeted on certain groups are less controversial than task forces.
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