I may have phrased it a little stronger than I meant to, but I stand by the crux of what I said, which is that a room full of black people isn't diversity any more than a room full of white people is.
GeneralMayhem, I completely agree with you that an all black team is no more diverse than an all white team. Some might make the argument that there could be benefits to having a homogeneous team of an underrepresented group if it eliminates the plight the author went through, but I think we'd be hard pressed to find people who believe the long term solution to the issues in tech are separate racially homogeneous teams. But either way a homogeneous black team and a homogeneous white team are still both non-diverse teams.
That said, reading through the article I don't see the author ever claiming that she wants the industry to have predominantly black teams, or that predominantly black teams are the pinnacle of diversity as you suggest. In fact what I was so impressed by how little opinion or suggestion she provided throughout the entire article. For the most part, simply a listing of events that occurred through her career and the impact it had on her.
Regarding the specific quote mentioned in the great-grandparent comment: "When I transferred to my second team there, Desktop Support, diversity lightning struck: I was a black woman reporting to another black woman in a technical role."
Maybe I'm misreading it, but I interpreted it as follows: The expression "lightning struck" generally means that a rare event occurred (I didn't see much listing of it on google, but I've heard the expression many times. Maybe it's a regional thing?). The rare event in this case was, "a black woman reporting to a black woman in a technical role." And I think most people working in tech would pretty much agree this is rare (I don't think I've ever seen it).
And I believe excerpting the next sentence without the two that follows it is somewhat removing the sentence from its context. Here I include all three - she writes: "Moreover, our team was predominantly black. I could relate to my teammates without having to conform. I didn’t have to be anything different than who I was and I flourished there."
My take here is that being secure in an environment where she could relax, she didn't have to spend significant mental cycles trying to conform to other's expectations of her, and she could just be herself and be accepted - as a result she "flourished". Whether that is just personally or also professionally isn't explicitly stated.
Finally quoting another comment you made below
>True, but mostly what I meant was that it's funny that she refers to a room full of black people as a utopia of diversity, when it's really just that she happens to be in the majority there.
As far as I could see the author never states the idea of a team of predominantly black people being a utopia or ideal of diversity. I believe this might be an incorrect interpretation of what was written. She does say how wonderful it is to work in an environment where you are accepted for who you are (which she found on that team discussed above), not that a person needs a homogeneous team to be accepted. To support this, near the end she sates what she would like to see in an ideal case "Ideally I’d like to work in a less homogeneous environment where I don’t feel so different." Ie. less homogeneity. However, even that, she doesn't ask of the industry. She doesn't ask for there to be more black people in tech; her simple request, the final sentence of her essay is "My industry needs to change to make everyone feel included and accepted." The only change she is asking for is that Tech allow people who are different to feel accepted for who they are. An incredibly modest but valuable human request.
In general I try to avoid writing comments quoting other people like this because no matter how well meaning you may be, when read on the internet it often comes across as sniping. So I'll leave things there, as I do genuinely appreciate this discussion, and hopefully this comment came across as a positive discussion as I intended.
My goal was just to point out that we should be cautious and ensure that in discussions we separate what the author is saying from our interpretation of their intent. It's a challenging task to do in any reading.
One thing I would point out though is that her statement that she didn't have to conform was based on working on a predominantly black team. So, she's saying that due to the visible conformity she no longer felt the need to conform in other social aspects, like games and beer? If that is the case then she will never feel comfortable in a diverse team. A true diverse team will never have enough similarity, physical or social, for her to feel comfortable and she'll alwasy feel the pressure to conform.
