That’s great!
Just to clarify for people who only read the headline: “Black Python Devs(BPDs) is a global community hoping to increase the participation of Black and Colo(u)red Pythonistas in the greater Python Developer Community” not the group that maintains the popular Python formatter known as Black.
Do the python people really call themselves “Pythonistas”?
Yes, yes we do.
Doesn’t it sound racist to promote people of only one skin color?
If those people are marginalised why not make organisations that help them get into programming?
When you think about stereotypical programmers, you usually picture a white guy somewhere between 30 and 50 years of age (at least in Europe and I presume the USA). Coding used to be a profession that was predominantly made up of women but when it became clear that it would become an important job more and more men became interested in IT so that now there are about eight male programmers out of ten.
Black people have similar issues (and god forbid you are a black woman) in that they often are paid worse for the same jobs than white people and have worse chances to get good secondary education and academic jobs even if they have the same intelligence as white people. Helping people to get into computer sciences that statistically have way lower chances to do so without any fault of their own is a good thing in my opinion.
I was at PyCon 2024 a few days ago where the founder of Black Python Developers gave a keynote talk. He talked about going to one gathering after another and being one of just a handful of Black attendees. Or how the few Black leaders are often asked to fill an impossible number of posts because there just aren’t enough of them to fulfill the demand. So yes, having an organization to help foster inclusion of people who are largely frozen out of the community is necessary. Someday this won’t be necessary, but for now it is.
No it isn’t racist anymore than consensual sex is rape. There is nothing adverse or hateful here. I wish groups like this didn’t exist. I wish women didn’t need to circle the wagons and create safe spaces and we could all participate in open source as peers. I don’t know if people troll with these sorts of comments or lack emotional intelligence. If you don’t want these divisions to exist then don’t be part of the problem.
I find stuff like this a little bit condescending and cringe. But, at the end of the day I believe groups have the right to associate with who they please, I just won’t join any of these groups.
Racism is a Problem when certain groups do not get the same chances or their safety is in danger. In this case no one is at a disadvantage through their work, quite the contrary
I think so but society tends to disagree.
There is a term for it but I forgot what it is
