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And we never will when you oversimplify someone sharing their lived experiences because of your personal unawareness of said experiences, and definitely not when one pithily reduces someone's expressions down to that.

Sorry to be that (black) guy but

/rolls eyes

shameless plug, loosely related: https://medium.com/the-phenomenon-of-black/a-few-words-on-th...




Please be civil, there's really no reason to be rude -- even if you disagree. I believe the point that they were trying to make is that on the surface it seems like a double-standard. We have a huge cultural focus on diversity where we want to see more success from those who aren't cisgender heterosexual white males in tech, but when we talk about that focus there's usually a critique that someone is being disingenuous.

We, as a culture, are focused on giving people with social disadvantages opportunities to be successful, and so it makes sense to applaud that success, ask questions, and highlight how successful you've been despite said-disadvantages.

On the other hand, I understand that it gets old quickly, and that eventually the label ends up feeling like it's taking over your real identity -- putting you in a lesser league compared to your peers. It feels like, as you said, that you're reducing someone's expressions down to their minority status.

The only way to appease both sides would be to give people opportunities based on their social disadvantages as a minority and then when they make it big pretend like it never happened. Sure, it's more comfortable for everyone involved, but it seems to me to be intellectually dishonest. What do you think?


I think this comment says it better than I'll ever be able to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12090093




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