[PC-NCSG] [NCSG-Discuss] On Diversity and Discrimination

[David Cake]

On 31/01/2013, at 6:12 PM, Marc Perkel <marc at CHURCHOFREALITY.ORG> wrote:

> I'm leaning against the idea of diversity/discrimination in decision making bodies unless there is a reason to do so. One can not assume that discrimination exists by default. I don't know if you are talking about this email group or not but I have no idea what color/gender/or sexual orientation anyone on this list is.

	And you will note ICANN does not attempt to determine ethnicity or sexual orientation in its diversity processes. 
	Our gender diversity requirements are fairly simple, and apart from a couple of small areas within the community, fairly easily met. I can actually recall only one time in NCSG when gender diversity was as issue in choosing an NCSG rep, and I was the person who voluntarily stepped down from consideration for gender diversity reasons, and I was happy to to do so. 
	Geographical diversity is, in my opinion, absolutely essential for ICANN. 
	It is essential to ICANN to actually represent the world. If we do not enforce geographical diversity, many sections of ICANN will cheerily slip into being mostly run from North America. 
	
> Nor do I care. I see it as a distinction without a difference.
> 
> I myself am a cybernetic artificial life form from the future. I come from the planet Kolob. We are an androgynous species. We reproduce by mitosis, which is splitting in half creating 2 individuals. We are either invisible or appear to be whatever shape we choose to make you puny humans feel comfortable. We are a telepathic race and share a singular consciousness. I communicate with you using a subspace inter-dimentional modem.

	I'm sorry, but where you are born isn't relevant. Where you are resident, however, is. Sub-space modern or whatever, where do you receive your mail? 
	Before mocking the rules, it would help to understand it. 
	Cheers
		David
		
> 
> On 1/31/2013 5:51 PM, Andrew A. Adams wrote:
>> Dan and Avri's points are both well-made and strong further arguments for
>> supporting decent diversity requirements in decision-making bodies.
>> 
>> A further point is that such bodies interact and again we see that same
>> dynamic. For small bodies with tens of members it is hard to get
>> representation of all groups (and of course individual differences between
>> members of groups are as large as the differences between groups on many
>> occasions). So, for groups which are relatively small percentages of the
>> overall population (LGBT, to the best of my knowledge are only a few
>> percentage of the entire population) it is difficult to require a group of
>> only ten to always have one LGBT member. Within the broader set of groups,
>> however, there should be efforts made to ensure that out of the perhaps few
>> hundreds of representatives (and over time, multiples of that) that at least
>> some of these representatives are from these small groups. Again, the local
>> maximum of one committee and one term should be leavened with understanding
>> of the longer term benefits of diversity.
>> 
>> Avri's point about how one measures these things applies across all of these
>> broad considerations also provides us with ethical guidance pointing towards
>> requiring best efforts in diversity within groups, across groups and over
>> time, while maintaining open and transparent definitions of "Minimum
>> Competence" required (and providing avenues to gain the necessary competences
>> for those in under-represented groups). ICANN's Fellowship Program is, I
>> think, a good example of an effort to provide better geographic diversity,
>> though there may be room to expand upon it to cover other under- or
>> un-represented minority groups rather than simply developed/developing nation
>> citizenship/residency.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>