It turns out that something happens when you stop grumbling and start doing things. To be honest, initially I was really surprised that it's working. So, I want to assure you that that works and I would recommend you to try the same.
This issue was raised at least two times on this list during the past five years. As participants in our global events, I saw one Black American (Wikimedia Conference 2012, among staff). Counting that there were a couple of hundreds of Americans in London, we should have expected a couple of dozens of Black Americans. Unfortunately, I saw none.
If I counted well, they are approximately 5 *times* less represented among WMF staff counting demographics of San Francisco and 10 times less represented counting general US population.
But that's the grumbling cliche. So, a couple of months ago I finally started doing something and, surprisingly, something happened.
I realized that in 2007 in Zagreb, during the Open Translation Tools event [1] I saw unusually high number of Black Americans for one free software/content event: two. It was actually very high in relative terms, as well. I think that they were something like 40% percents of American participants.
So, I approached Alice [2] in October and it turned out that she had been very enthusiastic about the idea which I had represented to her: To reach Black Americans and incorporate them into our global movement. And we started working on that.
(Yes, as she is Brooklyn based, we approached WM NYC, but it's quite regular Wikimedia chapter. They are doing great things, sometimes the rest of the world doesn't even realize the size of what they are doing, but they have so WikiPedian relationship to the phenomenon of time: eventually, everything will be fine. In the meantime we'll likely die, but that's fine, to. In relation to this, I have to say that, as a movement, we lost a lot of very good people because that type of relationship to time. In other words: Yes, WM NYC has one outreach program in Harlem, but the dynamics is too slow. And, again, WM NYC outreach to ethnic minorities is much better than in many other places, as it exists.)
As I didn't want to spend Alice's enthusiasm on Wikimedia bureaucracy, we started doing things alone. The product is the project [3], which will be started during the first weekend of February in Brooklyn Public Library, during their program "Celebrate Black History Month!" [4].
I am aware that this is a hot topic in American society, but there are ways to solve hot topics and, surprisingly again, it's not hard at all. I needed just conviction that I am doing the right thing when I went to Zagreb in 2005 and in Pristina in 2009. And we had wars here, ended 10 years ago at that time.
There is one important thing to have in mind: We are not doing that to have one more badge on our list of political correctness. We are doing that because we want not just to share our knowledge with the world, but to allow others to share their knowledge with us and the rest of the world. (In relation to what we could get is at least one real gem: Garifuna language [5], a Native American language of Honduras spoken by Garifuna people [6], who are, because of historical events, actually black.)
Speaking generally, as Wikimedian and human, this *is* my job. But speaking particularly, this is the job of American Wikimedians. I'd like to see you on February 7th and 8th events in Brooklyn Public Library. Yes, I will teach attendees how to edit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects via video stream, but, obviously Wikimedians in BPL would be much more useful than me.
And, finally, if you are a Black American Wikimedian and reading this email, this is the time for you to come out and empower other Black Americans to become Wikimedians.
[1] https://aspirationtech.org/events/opentranslation [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Aliceba [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/AFROcroWd_and_Interglider.ORG/Out... [4] http://www.bklynlibrary.org/events/celebrate-black-history-month [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garifuna_language [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garifuna_people