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Thread of some posts about diversity & inclusion I've written over the years. I still stand behind these.

(I'm resharing bc a few folks are suggesting Jeremy's CoC experience ➡️ partially our fault for promoting diversity, we should change our values, etc. Nope!)

1/

Math & CS have been my focus since high school/the late 90s, yet the sexism & toxicity of the tech industry drove me to quit. I’m not alone. 40% of women working in tech leave. (2015)

https://t.co/NGNSxnnAdt 2/

Superficial, showy efforts at diversity-washing are more harmful than doing nothing at all. Research studies confirm this (2015)

https://t.co/1t6T4LKqiA 3/

The primary reason women leave the tech industry is because they are treated unfairly, underpaid, less likely to be fast-tracked, and not given a fair chance to advance. (2016)

https://t.co/NkVc5Yseo9 4/

Diversity Crisis in AI, 2016 (written the week we publicly launched fast ai, this has been a core value from the start): https://t.co/hejGQTHGwU

Diversity Crisis in AI, 2017 edition: https://t.co/Owwt8C14yh 5/
I can't but help coming back to this thread. I owe Uncle Gbenro a bottle of cognac for it.

Let me build on it a little...

Prior to when Carlos Zappa renamed Ahaba to "Asaba", ndị Oshimịrị were quite an intertwined people who knew their kin.


As such, you could not "kpa alo" in Ahaba without a priest from Nri present.

This kinship is seen in the names. Onicha Mịrị, Onicha Ụgbo, Onicha Olona, as examples, the first being the great market town, the last two being on the west side of the great river, Ori mịrị...

Then Carlos Zappa came, and renamed Ahaba to Asaba, while TE Dennis renamed Onicha to Onitsha.

A hypothetical child, let's call him Chukwudebe Isichei, born exactly 120 years ago today in Asaba, knew himself as being Onye Oshimili, as did his cousin across the great river.

The year Isichei was born, a strange company, the Royal Niger Company, without his elders' consent or even knowledge, passed over "ownership" of his village to the British Crown, and the cartographers went to work.

Isichei became a "Southern Nigerian" from Onitsha Division.

Then on Isichei's 14th birthday, his Southern #Nigeria was "amalgamated" with a strange land called Northern Nigeria, and he was told that himself and those people whom he had not much in common with, except perhaps the colour of their skin, were now from the same country.