Mentoring and diversity for Python

Maybe I'm emblematic of this problem.

I tend to think that "obviously" we should be able to have female participation with comparable numbers to male numbers, and that the lack of this shows a clear problem. I also feel like I've talked to a lot of people about this problem for the last decade and change, and think I have some idea about what the problem looks like specifically and how it plays out and what sorts of things are likely to help.

For participation from what we think of as racial groups, I have no idea what the numbers should be, and I don't really know what the biggest problems are and I don't know what would be likely to help.

I know there are some things that will help both scenarios. I've pushed for removing names from resumes in the hiring process, and encouraged dismantling talk of "meritocracies" which typically damage all out-groups. I have come to believe that broadening the mechanisms by which companies seek talent is necessary to avoid hiring mostly "people like us", including seeking talent from different physical regions and different schools, and that companies must be willing to hire junior staff to get access to groups before they give up on the industry entirely (never mind that the idea of hiring only people who you expect to come in with all the knowledge they will need is dumb in other respects.)

But I think this mostly comes from the targets for women being more obvious, and it having become a spotlighted issue recently drive this to a significant degree.

Or to be more awful, what is it like to be an african-american software engineer? I don't know. I've met maybe a handful in my life in the silicon valley bubble, and I'm not terribly enamored of turning the conversation into one of stupid, clumsy questions if I don't know them very well.

I guess I'm just saying you're probably right at a number of levels, and that I think there are a number of hurdles to getting to a more reasonable place. I spent time in a diversity and inclusion working group for around 6 months in a company that was pretty drastically diversity-challenged, and there were no serious discussions of minority outreach beyond a footnote of going to some job fair / career thing or other. We had east asian and south asian participationin the group, but in silicon valley software I don't know if these groups particularly think of themselves as minorities. (They don't get the same advancement opportunities, but representation is very high.)