Diversity at Dance Conventions: Are We Just Checking Boxes?

[@tomatopotato2881]

I always saw DEI initiatives as being applied too late. For example, I used to teach CompSci 101 & 102 and the head of our department aimed to more aggressively recruit black and female students, since they were grossly underrepresented among CompSci majors. Those initiatives were largely unsuccessful. We still ended up with ~85% of CompSci graduates being males in our uni and -- among those males -- mostly Asian and white students. In particular, we had an overwhelmingly disproportionate representation of Indian and Indo-American CompSci graduates given that Indian immigrants and Indo-Americans make up such a small proportion of the US population. If we're going to perceive this inequality as a problem, it seems to me like we have to address this at an earlier age. Perhaps we need to raise our daughters and black children to play more with computers and become interested in programming them. We might need reforms to schools that start to change the cultural landscape. For example, if we want to see more male dancers in ballet, I don't see university or -- worse -- the workplace, as the place to solve the root problem. It might tie more to factors mentioned in the discussion like how male ballet dancers might be bullied out of their interests as children. Maybe we need cultural reforms that look very favorably towards male ballet dancers as with the case of Russia, Belgium, France, and Cuba.