skeleton567 (3/31/2014)
Pardon me, but it appears that we have fallen into exactly the situation here that I described. We're all talking about men/women, majority/minority, etc instead of what should be the key goal of professional organizations, that of improving competency and sharing insights. And this further illustrates my original thought that splintering into subgroups based on some irrelevant classification tends to muddy the water relative to the main focus of IT professionals, that being, again, competency in the profession.
It's not an irrelevant classification, it's one that is impacted. A large professional organization is good, and it helps the profession. PASS has helped here. However it also doesn't serve it's various groups, like women. There are entirely too many jerks in this business that still think women aren't as competent, and don't deserve the same opportunities, regardless of their skills.
The same could be said for people in these other "irrelevant classifications". Your example alone seems to imply some distrust of at least some ethnic minority because he/she was incompetent. Extending that to any other instance of that ethnic group would be wrong, but people make these judgements every day.
They always will. That's why the groups are needed.