[Gendispatch] The actual issues (was Re: Meetings summary)

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

>     Il 16/10/2020 15:02 Bron Gondwana <[e-mail]> ha scritto:
> 
> 
>     Does the IETF have confess to some "sins"?
> 
>     I believe this is the core issue underlying much of the disagreement.  I feel that there's not consensus on whether we have something to apologise for.
> 
>     There's also a sub issue hidden under that, which is this question:
> 
>     Is the IETF systemically racist?
> 
One of the problems I have with this entire discussion (and with the way draft-knodel framed it - and I said this to Mallory and Niels already when they brought its first version up in HRPC, over two years ago) is that it focuses only on African-Americans, and only on the use of certain words in standards.

Personally, I think that the IETF is not racist. But I think that it is often "exclusionary", in the sense that it actively (culturally) makes participation by certain groups harder or less influential upon the final outcomes. These groups include, in no particular order:
- newbies / outsiders
- people that work in certain sectors of the industry (e.g. ISPs)
- non-technical stakeholders that are affected by the technical direction taken by the Internet, starting with governments
- anyone not having English as their mother tongue

Then, there are also groups that are underrepresented because of a broader issue in the tech sector, such as participants from developing countries and from ethnic minorities in developed countries (including African-Americans). These would benefit from proactive inclusion and capacity building programs.

Moreover, in all these cases, the wording of certain technical concepts in standards is not the primary reason for the disadvantage that these people have in participating - possibly not even one of the top five.

I think that this entire discussion would produce much deeper effects in the long term if it started with a broader analysis of what can be a disadvantaging factor for each of many different groups. It's not even a new discussion; ICANN in 2000 was culturally much like the IETF is in 2020 and while I am in no way suggesting that the IETF should become like ICANN is today (actually that would be an utter disaster), perhaps there are lessons to be learnt from what other Internet organizations did to address this category of problems.

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Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
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