I was raised to believe I am not Black.

That my mother is not Black — although as a Dominican woman of direct Afro-Caribbean descent, her genes are 50% African, and she is not white passing in many parts of the USA, especially the South, where I lived for years.
Dominican culture in which I was partly raised is deeply racist, although they are a mixed people who share the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

There are many reasons for this, one of whom is the dictator Trujillo, who had an outsized influence on how Dominicans see themselves.
My grandpa taught my mom to assimilate American culture. She came over when she was 5.

She doesn’t speak with an accent.
She has a Master’s degree and a job.
She married a white man from North Carolina.

That’s “making it” for a Dominican, as most are abjectly poor.
Mom thinks she’s a liberal and hates Trump, but also believes that BLM looters should be shot.

She is sympathetic to police and their fascist tactics, but doesn’t seem to realize she could be treated much the same as Black ppl if she ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That is the privilege my Grandfather purchased for us by immigrating from the Dominican Republic and working very, very hard at a Union typography career to make a life for his family: the privilege to ignore racial issues.

He was raised in a house with a dirt floor, like this.
The amount of racism I have heard directly out of the mouth of my mother, a woman who married an Indian man & produced a dark-skinned child, is very sad to me.

Basic example: I was told I have “good hair” therefore I am not a N-word!! 🤢
My Dominican family’s influence was such that I also married a white man and moved to a locale that was close to his hometown but entirely hostile to me.

(I was told starting in childhood that if I ever brought a Black man home, I would be disowned forever).
When Trump was running for office, then elected, I began to experience more overt racism.

I had several very bad experiences...
...and when I came home to tell my spouse about them, he said I was overreacting. They didn’t happen when we were together.

I arrived home in tears once over a scary encounter with police while driving home from a SANS con.

He said, “you’re lucky you didn’t get your ass beat”.
His refusal to acknowledge differences in how ppl treat me & how that affects how I see the world was definitely a sticking point in our relationship.

He is from South Alabama, and while he acknowledges racism exists, discussion of it is an uncomfortable topic for him.
In his mind, the only reason I was experiencing racism was because I was looking for it.

Doesn’t that sound familiar? (“If you don’t look for it, it doesn’t exist”)

I divorced him.
I guarantee I would not have been hired as Director of IR at Intel if I were more visibly Black.

Not a direct indictment of the company nor my fmr boss. Has everything to do with how Black ppl are disadvantaged from cradle to grave & how the industry is actively hostile to POC.
Part of that lack of welcoming is how the culture & language are geared towards (built by) the demographic majority.

If a specific verbiage isn’t a problem for whites, then it isn’t a problem, right?

Lack of representation is self-fulfilling in many ways.
Why would the Black people who have little inborn privilege & have fought so hard to enter tech to gain a career & wealth, often in direct contrast to their families & peers who struggle in blue collar work — why would they potentially jeopardize all that...
...by publicly speaking out on social media or at their jobs, subsequently harming their reputation amongst the demographic majority — & making the white gatekeepers of this industry consider their outspokenness & refusal to hide their Blackness to be liabilities on their teams?
Bringing a POC onto a team where there are none requires integration work.

Most managers aren’t going to be equipped to handle, nor are they up to learning about it.

Not when “diversity” is so “politically” fraught.

Not when there are so many other work issues to sort out.
The safest thing to do is to “focus on the infosec” and let the rest sort itself out.

All those small decisions in aggregate are part & parcel of how we ended up here.

Ongoing death by 1,000 tiny cuts — like every comment from a Devil’s Advocate claiming language harms no one.
So, when people RAIL against changing technical lingo or names because it might INCONVENIENCE them and doesn’t seem like REAL RACISM, forgive me for being disappointed about it, and disgusted to see the numbers of infosec folk who turn out to argue that it isn’t a problem at all.
Black people are not a monolith and have varying perspectives.

Those who have experienced someone shouting the N word at them in the street OR MUCH WORSE are likely not to consider whitelist/blacklist as violence, because they’ve already experienced so much more.
So naw, they’re not often going to show up to comparatively petty discussions about language changes in tech when the problem is so much larger in heft & wider scope.

Not when so many are using these discussions as an opportunity to deliver performative allyship.
Not when some of these folks seem to have a background in being demonstrably racist, sexist, or non-inclusive in other ways, especially to the people they work closely with on a regular basis.

Those people are coopting the discussion to publicly say “look, I’m not a racist!”
So don’t be surprised when Black people don’t rally around you or show up to cheer when you make small changes that should have already been made.

Hell, I didn’t even succeed in getting BSides to establish a basic blanket CoC over their org, which they say just isn’t possible.
> Stop using antiquated language
> Stop fighting against change
> Acknowledge diverse perspectives
> Center Black people, but
> Don’t be surprised when they don’t cheer when you make small changes that should have already happened

#Infosec
#InclusiveInfosec
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