That argument sounds immature, but understandable until you realize all disagreement with identity-politics madness is labelled “racist”.

There will always be someone who thinks being welcoming to a more diverse group that feels offended by existing behavioral norms is madness. I don't see the need to be inclusive towards anonymous people who don't even use their regular identities to debate their points of view.

It annoys non-racists as well, and reveals that it's not motivated by actual results, but simply by good feelings and political points.

It's not a step in the right direction because it annoys racists. It annoys racists because it's a step in the right direction. It annoys other people for different reasons but, in the end, if we want to include a more diverse community in our world, we can make some very small allowances.

The danger being that it annoys various non-racists as well. Probably not so much a step in the right direction.

Why is the annoyance more important than being inclusive? If we want others to feel welcome in our community, we may need to do some accommodation. There is a huge value in attracting more people and making a language change is a very minor annoyance compared to the benefit those fellow users and developers will bring.

I'm a minority and, like many, I see this as just playing word games; the inclusivity equivalent of security theater. I have no expectation of any significant gains in new developers from this sort of thing and therefore no inclination to praise or support it. I would go so far as to say that I am annoyed that this is allegedly being done for my sake as a minority.

If businesses and organizations seriously want to help inclusivity, send money for tech education to schools with a high proportion of URMs. Send volunteers too. Send something that actually represents a significant sacrifice. Not this.

Demands like this came from minorities. It's a small, easy thing. Not every project is sufficiently well funded and connected (probably none is) to directly contribute or influence school budgets. Many communities, however, have outreach programs and some measure of support for minorities (funding for conferences used to be one, when we had conferences). To do more groundwork, we'd need more connectedness on the ground.

I'd love to be able to ensure a fair distribution of resources to schools, but that's where we would need to interact more with human rights activists that know how to be the most effective, while making sure we manage organization's funds in a way that's in accordance to its bylaws (which may need to be changed before anything else).

> "Demands like this came from minorities. It's a small, easy thing..."

While some minority individuals may have demanded this, it seems more to me that the driving force is largely white people. And that it's small and easy serves only to highlight its triviality. Thanks but no thanks.

That may be a reflection of current power structures in place. The driving force behind a lot of the open source is of white males because of historical suppression of minorities, so it's inevitable that some of these minor initial steps would come from white males or would need to be embraced by white males.