If somebody with Asian or Indian heritage identifies themselves in casual conversation as an engineer nobodies interest is peaked because it is not seen as unusual. If a woman or a person of color says the same they are seen as an exception.
Asians and Indians (who are also Asians by the way) are "persons of color"
I understand why you may be serious when you say this, but the authors are hand waving when they talk about white privilege because it's long winded and tangential to the experience of the individuals profiled to explain that Asian and Indian Americans often have privilege in the tech industry that black and Hispanic Americans aren't granted. If you take an honest appraisal of the social landscape and the prevalent racial stereotypes in the United States you would quickly understand why the authors hand waved in that way.
Pedantic comments like yours do little to move the conversation forward they merely distract from the real issues. It's really frustrating to click through into what I hope would be a serious discussion about discrimination in the industry and find instead HN commenters are trying to score pedantic points. This would be less frustrating if you made a substantive comment about how different groups face different stereotypes rather than attempting to undermine the original article due to its failure to be specific enough in its analysis of who is granted privilege.
Pedantic comments like yours do little to move the conversation forward they merely distract from the real issues.
I would argue that making incorrect and oversimplified premises is far more distracting to real issues than some person's brief pedantic comment. You can't have a debate if you start by poisoning the well and declaring false axioms.
Is it oversimplified for a short article? Maybe if it were an a longer or academic piece I would agree with you. But the focus of the article is how individuals deal with bias against social groups they belong to moreso than which groups are granted privilege. Not every article needs to be an exhaustive treatise that engages every concept exhaustively.
It would be excellent to have some better verbage for what the authors are trying to express. There are some components of white privilege that apply in this case, and some that don't. Obviously, Asian and Indian Americans don't get the benefit of "you're white and I'm white, so I like you," but they do get the benefit of some kind of "expectation of quality." And there's probably a third component, which may be closer to the authors' original intent: "you have similar cultural values to me, so I like you."
I think it's useful to consider those components separately. They suggest different vectors of attack against these endemic problems.
My thinking here is framed by John Ogbu's concept of the involuntary minority: all the minorities that became minorities in America by choice are doing pretty well; all of the minorities that were made minorities in America by force (either conquered in situ or brought by force) are doing pretty poorly. It takes a shoe-horn to fit native-blooded Hispanics into that dichotomy, but it helps there too.
It makes me laugh a little. If you look at wealth by race, Asians (East Asians) out earn whites. Does that mean I (as a white person) should point out their "Asian privilege"?
Who said anything about Asian and Indian Americans having white privilege? (The linked article doesn't...). Of course, they are quite well represented in the tech industry, but that neither means Asian and Indian Americans have the full constellation of cultural presumptions as default referred to by "white privilege", nor that the tech industry has no need to investigate its issues with diversity. Asian and Indian Americans have their particular struggles as minorities, with some commonalities with and some differences from other minorities' struggles.
There's the concept of passing: a minority group that might be discriminated against in one context is accepted as and afforded the privileges of a member of the majority group in another context, often to close ranks against a different minority group the majority sees as more of a threat.
As nemothekid says, it does say a lot about white privilege in that white privilege is a social institution that can be expanded or retracted. For instance, it was expanded to include the Irish, who were once viewed as degenerates. There is still a legacy of anti-Irish sentiment, but they've largely been accepted into the fold.
The existence of poor white people is not a proof against white privilege. It's sad that you use your experience of a working poor childhood based in struggle to dismiss the struggles of other people growing up in the same way as you did.
I find it shocking that people can lack empathy for people who share an almost identical experience to their own, but when you're black it's something that you need to learn to accept.
Here's a question for you: why were you poor? Were your parents rural, or a pair of black sheep who got together?
None of what you've said demonstrates white privilege is a myth...
(At most, it is an argument agains the claims, which no one ever made, "No white people have had any problems of any kind" and "No person ever overcame any disadvantages in their life".)
> they have the opportunity to learn just like anyone else, [...] for free in a public library
This is a statement of privilege right here. A girl might not feel comfortable taking a class in a public library because guys are staring at her chest or pulling on her hair or calling her names. A black or hispanic person similarly might feel uncomfortable sitting in a library surrounded by white people, or the library in their predominantly black neighbourhood might have slower, less-well-maintained computers.
No, not every woman or black or hispanic person has to deal with these issues. But many do. Yes, it is possible to overcome them -- my parents did, to some degree. But I'm certain I got to where I am today because I didn't have to. Building safe "blacks-only" or "women-only" spaces for learning is only a short-term hack to provide these groups with "equivalent" opportunity when learning "for free in a public library" isn't an option.
Just because you grew up poor does not mean that you didn't benefit from privileges awarded to whites. Admitting that these privileges exist doesn't mean that individual whites had an easy time.
"You will hear a lot of crap about African-Americans and Females having a hard time..."
Your argument, in a nut, seems to be that barriers to learning are low, and therefore, blacks and women had opportunities to learn, they just chose otherwise, and the consequences are on them.
Of course, even if true, this is simplistic. You see why, right? Your sum total of success is due to more than learning how to program in a basement. It has to do with mentoring along the way, finding peers, being seen as able to do things. If you're in the minority (within discipline), it's harder. If the minority has the odds stacked against it in the wider society (and we're not arguing about that, right?), then things get harder still.
I'm completely sick of hearing these comments on HN. As someone who also grew up white and poor, yet made it into the tech field, there's no way I could deny that people of color experience life differently than I do. We don't live in a post-racial society, white people do get treated differently in a variety of ways, and just because a handful of minorities have made it in tech doesn't mean they speak for the potential success of all others.
These large corporations only want more female and diverse workforce because they have the perception that they can pay these groups less than their white male counterparts. They claim what they're doing is completely egalitarian, but in reality they abhor the idea of equal pay. Just look at the recent spat with Satya Nadella:
These large corporations only want a more female and diverse workforce because they have the perception that they can pay these groups less than their white male counterparts. They claim what they're doing is completely egalitarian, but in reality they abhor the idea of equal pay. Just look at the recent spat with Satya Nadella:
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadAsians and Indians (who are also Asians by the way) are "persons of color"
Pedantic comments like yours do little to move the conversation forward they merely distract from the real issues. It's really frustrating to click through into what I hope would be a serious discussion about discrimination in the industry and find instead HN commenters are trying to score pedantic points. This would be less frustrating if you made a substantive comment about how different groups face different stereotypes rather than attempting to undermine the original article due to its failure to be specific enough in its analysis of who is granted privilege.
I would argue that making incorrect and oversimplified premises is far more distracting to real issues than some person's brief pedantic comment. You can't have a debate if you start by poisoning the well and declaring false axioms.
I think it's useful to consider those components separately. They suggest different vectors of attack against these endemic problems.
My thinking here is framed by John Ogbu's concept of the involuntary minority: all the minorities that became minorities in America by choice are doing pretty well; all of the minorities that were made minorities in America by force (either conquered in situ or brought by force) are doing pretty poorly. It takes a shoe-horn to fit native-blooded Hispanics into that dichotomy, but it helps there too.
I find it shocking that people can lack empathy for people who share an almost identical experience to their own, but when you're black it's something that you need to learn to accept.
Here's a question for you: why were you poor? Were your parents rural, or a pair of black sheep who got together?
"Struggles" are relative to the people going through them.
(At most, it is an argument agains the claims, which no one ever made, "No white people have had any problems of any kind" and "No person ever overcame any disadvantages in their life".)
It is ridiculous to suggest that men and white people aren't privileged in the US, let alone in the US tech sector.
http://amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html
This is a statement of privilege right here. A girl might not feel comfortable taking a class in a public library because guys are staring at her chest or pulling on her hair or calling her names. A black or hispanic person similarly might feel uncomfortable sitting in a library surrounded by white people, or the library in their predominantly black neighbourhood might have slower, less-well-maintained computers.
No, not every woman or black or hispanic person has to deal with these issues. But many do. Yes, it is possible to overcome them -- my parents did, to some degree. But I'm certain I got to where I am today because I didn't have to. Building safe "blacks-only" or "women-only" spaces for learning is only a short-term hack to provide these groups with "equivalent" opportunity when learning "for free in a public library" isn't an option.
"You will hear a lot of crap about African-Americans and Females having a hard time..."
Your argument, in a nut, seems to be that barriers to learning are low, and therefore, blacks and women had opportunities to learn, they just chose otherwise, and the consequences are on them.
Of course, even if true, this is simplistic. You see why, right? Your sum total of success is due to more than learning how to program in a basement. It has to do with mentoring along the way, finding peers, being seen as able to do things. If you're in the minority (within discipline), it's harder. If the minority has the odds stacked against it in the wider society (and we're not arguing about that, right?), then things get harder still.
It's hard to see why this is controversial.
Why do you assume there aren't problems because you haven't experienced them?
These large corporations only want more female and diverse workforce because they have the perception that they can pay these groups less than their white male counterparts. They claim what they're doing is completely egalitarian, but in reality they abhor the idea of equal pay. Just look at the recent spat with Satya Nadella:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/10/microsoft-...
All this comes down to is paying workers less under the guise of social progress. It's absolutely disgusting.
These large corporations only want a more female and diverse workforce because they have the perception that they can pay these groups less than their white male counterparts. They claim what they're doing is completely egalitarian, but in reality they abhor the idea of equal pay. Just look at the recent spat with Satya Nadella:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/10/microsoft-...
All this comes down to is paying workers less under the guise of social progress. It's absolutely disgusting.