i (black skin/latino ethnicity) used to cringe at those too, but after thinking about why they exist some more, i finally realized that many people really appreciate having a "safe" space where they can be with other people that look or grew up like them.

my family and i usually get along pretty well, but we have very different ideas about things like money or family "closeness" that were only made evident to me from my white fiancee watching "from the sidelines," as someone else above me put it. It also happens that much of the way my family goes about things is very typical for Latino families.

She's asked some really really good questions that made me think hard about why my family does things the way they have. As you can imagine, this puts me between a rock and a hard place, as I don't want my family to think that I "forgot where I came from," but I also don't want to participate in things that can really set my future self back a number of years for the sake of the family.

Very few of my acquaintances and none of my close friends (i only have a handful) are Black or Latino, so I don't really have anyone that isn't family that I can talk about this stuff with. I also spend almost zero time with other people that "look like me" at work; I've run into very few Black or Latino engineers in my nine year career, though I know that there are plenty out there. I was almost always the only black/latino person on the teams i've been on.

I've tried the minority only clubs, both in college and after I started working, and found that I don't like being fit into homogenous boxes or participating in echo chambers. So I've stopped joining them.