BIPOC Documentarians¶
Our #bipoc Slack channel is a space dedicated to supporting BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) members within our community.
Background¶
As with many other professions, BIPOC remain painfully underrepresented in the tech industry, including but not limited to technical communication, software development, and open source.
According to Open MIC’s 2017 Report, Breaking the Mold: Investing in Racial Diversity in Tech:
- Black people, Latinos and Native Americans are underrepresented in tech by 16-to-18 percentage points compared with their presence in the U.S. labor force overall. Black people and Latinos each comprise just 5.3 percent of the Professionals category in U.S. tech industry labor data.
- While Asians are represented at a higher rate in the tech workforce than the private sector overall, white people are 1½ times more likely than Asians to rise to an executive rank.
- Among people of color who do enter the industry, many report isolation, discrimination and toxic work environments that prompt them to take their talent else-where. People of color leave tech at more than 3.5 times the rate of white men.
To shrink racial disparities and to build equity, we offer this space as BIPOC Documentarians (which includes technical writers) to:
- Emphasize the fact that we are already here, supporting one another and leading our communities.
- Encourage the professional development of BIPOC in tech writing, software development, and related fields.
Purpose¶
BIPOC need dedicated spaces in every profession, everywhere. We believe that one important way to practice anti-racism is to help other BIPOC communicators advance in their careers.
In a global field that is largely represented by white people, admonishing racism in spaces full of non-BIPOC people is limited in its impact. For one thing, these spaces do not capture the complexity of experiences that BIPOC have lived. BIPOC individuals and communities often experience various intersections of both privilege (e.g., colorism) and discrimination (e.g., physical/cognitive ability, gender identity, sexuality, citizenship status, neuro-status, socioeconomic status, linguistic fluency, religion, ethnicity).
How do we want to use this space?¶
- Create a supportive community with other people who are familiar with your experiences
- Network and share opportunities for BIPOC people in technical communication, software development, and open source
- Share knowledge and resources about anti-racism
- Invite more BIPOC into our field
- Build community, visibility, and leadership opportunities specifically for BIPOC
- Coordinate and publicize joint events with organizations with similar goals (e.g., Color Coded in Los Angeles)
Allies¶
This is a public channel whose primary purpose is to support BIPOC writers. If you do not identify as BIPOC, we thank you for acknowledging that this space is primarily meant for our personal and professional development.
We also invite you to participate as allies if you are not BIPOC, and we invite you to abide by the same rules that guide any decolonial project: yield space that doesn’t belong to you, and commit to listening and learning from others’ lived experiences.
