Diversity 2009
I'm posting this late in the conversation, for which I apologize.
Although
mac_stone has stepped down from 
diversity2009, the project is still one that I would not associate IBARW with, for the following reasons (please follow the links back, because the people writing there have much more eloquent and better fleshed-out arguments than I do):
This is not to say that a project similar to this one is futile. But for one to succeed, it must come from people who can prove their commitment to social justice and from people willing to work with—bottom up, not top down—the very communities they want to help.
* eta: To clarify, I am specifically singling out my own failure to engage in outreach and IBARW's origin as a project largely unaware of other POC efforts.
Although
mac_stone has stepped down from diversity2009, the project is still one that I would not associate IBARW with, for the following reasons (please follow the links back, because the people writing there have much more eloquent and better fleshed-out arguments than I do):- It is impossible to separate the community and the specific effort from the context and background from which it originated, and asking people to do so, particularly when they have had to put up with as many insults and condescension as Willow has, is dishonest and unfair and hurtful.
- Looking at the origins of the project shows that it assumes other groups in SF/F have been doing nothing, particularly other anti-racist groups, since this started out in an argument about racism. This is particularly galling, given Willow's commitment to social justice both in her own blog (linked above) and in her leadership in projects such as (but not limited to) the POC in SF Carnival.
- Most importantly: this is not an individual instance. This is part of a pattern*.
These links are taken largely from the feminist movement, because that's the one I know best, but this co-opting, this lack of outreach, this constant re-writing of the narrative to ignore POC activities in favor of those started by white people is not new, to this community of SF/F fandom or to more communities than I can count. And it is not right.
This is not to say that a project similar to this one is futile. But for one to succeed, it must come from people who can prove their commitment to social justice and from people willing to work with—bottom up, not top down—the very communities they want to help.
* eta: To clarify, I am specifically singling out my own failure to engage in outreach and IBARW's origin as a project largely unaware of other POC efforts.