Wrestling With Inclusion at LambdaConf

> And didn't I provide specific blog posts by the man in question w.r.t. his views on race relations?

I asked for a citation on the claim that he has called for the enslavement of black people. I specifically mentioned that I had seem him talk about how some groups were better slaves than others, and linked to a thread within his recent AMA.

You responded with a link to his blog where he said that slavery is a natural human relationship. I followed that link, searched for the places where he said slavery was a natural human relationship--and found nothing in those parts of the blog post where he called for enslavement or even said that it was a good thing.

Your second point was that he has said he is "amenable to white nationalist writings", and you cited a blog entry where he talked about this. There is no mention of slavery in that blog entry, and a bit of Googling has failed to turn up a connection between white nationalists and any advocacy for slavery.

You also brought up, without providing a cite, that he has discussed the suitability of different races for slavery. I had already noted that, since it was in the discussion from the AMA that I cited. In that discussion it was clear that he meant "suitability" in the sense that they work out better from the slaver's point of view. If one group of people tend to die when enslaved, and another tends to live, then the later are more suitable. Believing that doesn't imply that one believes that the second group should be slaves or that one supports slavery.

>At least there is some idea I am human there. He genuinely thinks non-white people are a sub-species.

Does this even matter if he never speaks to people face-to-face on a FL/OSS project? A commit is a commit and unless he's dropping Daily Stormer in IRC or the mailing list it shouldn't matter. If they're not harassing someone who's African-American or any other non-white ethnicity I don't think it should come up. More likely such people who are devout in their racism won't contribute to projects which have PoC heading or contributing to them on a regular basis. If your CoC goes outside the scope of handling harassment and incivility I'm not gonna support your project with donations or code submissions, ever. So, I guess that makes me one of the 'baddies' then.

You've gotta be careful about the Carlyle cite. I think he chose it carefully. There is a lot to Carlyle, not just odious racial theories and slavery apologia. If you try to associate Yarvin to defense of chattel slavery of African Americans through Carlyle, he'll dive into the weeds of the rest of Carlyle's work and take potshots at you from the bushes.

Instead, you have to carefully unspool all the stuff Yarvin writes. It's not enough to observe him lovingly citing Carlyle; you have to note how he also cites him when the subject of race comes up, and you have to tie it back to things like his warm and generous citation of Nehemiah Adams --- a figure who, unlike Carlyle, is not very notable for anything other than providing a defense of slavery that sounds suspiciously compatible with everything else Yarvin says about social organization. And so on, and so forth.

It's easy to see how two very smart people could get so tied up discussing this, especially when one of them ('tzs) is only casually acquainted with the work we're talking about.

I'm late to this conversation, but your CoC is problematic.

To participate in LambdaConf, participants must pledge their allegiance to your Code of Conduct. That's fine, except for the following part of the CoC that mandates the following:

"That I shall embrace and celebrate the abundant diversity in the human species, and refuse to feel threatened by those different from me;"

This is a highly problematic statement. By diversity, you mean diversity in sexuality, race, religion and politics. Why is this a problem?

Because nobody should be made to "embrace and celebrate" all the diverse facets of humanity. It's patently absurd: I'm not going to celebrate and endorse the views of paedophiles, I'm not going to embrace and celebrate the views of the doomsday Aum Sum cult, nor any of dozens of even more innocuous views such as open source is a cancer on society. Nor should a gay person have to celebrate and embrace the views of those who believe marriage should only be between a man and a woman.

And in fact, you don't. You've excluded a racist, which FWIW I don't have a problem with. But you are hardly celebrating the diversity of humanity, which includes those whose views deny people's essential humanity.

There is a big difference from politely and civilly disagreeing with the opinion of another, and asking someone to embrace and celebrate the fact that there are views held by others that they find fundamentally objectionable.

All you should be asking for is that you respect their right to hold their views, but not impose them on others at a conference that is about functional programming!

This Code of Conduct goes too far. As I've said, if you applied reductio ad absurdum then it would mean that it celebrates and embraces those who - like myself and evidently the conference organisers - don't believe that you should celebrate and embrace all aspects of the abundant diversity of humanity. The reason this argument reduces to the absurd is that because of my view, I am specifically excluded from your event, which means that your own CoC doesn't embrace and celebrate all diversity within humanity.

I'd suggest you dump that clause. It's self-contradictory and a ridiculous condition you are imposing on participants. In fact, it's a straight-jacket for conference organisers because when you do exclude someone you can, unfortunately rightly, be accused of violating your own CoC!

Nobody is denying that conference organizers have a right to censorship. We're just saying that it's better if they don't exercise it! The reason why e.g. academic venues don't censor (I'm guessing this, your comment kind-of implies it) is because they strive to be better, to uphold the right kind of values!