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Comment by whamlastxmas | Hacker News Reader

There's people saying there's too many whites and males in tech too.

Males, sure, there way more men than women in dev roles.

At least for Silicon Valley though, white people are, oddly enough, underrepresented relative to the US as a whole. Though that's less because white people are discriminated against, and more because there are a LOT of Asian immigrant tech workers.

There's people in Quebec Canada saying there's too many who speaks English in Quebec.

Well, the difference being that white males hold institutional power in the United States, whereas that isn't true for Asian males (or females).

Interesting claim but it's vague in a way that I really don't know what it means.

Are you saying that it is ok to be racist depending on the status of the person?

No, I'm saying there's a difference between people saying "there's too many Asians in tech" and "there's too many white males in tech".

Americans fixate on skin colour and forget that class is far more important

People pushing that argument tend to pretend there's not a significant interlinking between race and class in America.

Isn't that a strong argument for class as a better means for analysis? I mean, if they're so interlinked, why not avoid the pitfalls of racialism?

There are people alive today who's parents or grandparents lived for a time without civil rights. I don't think disregarding their experience is the correct direction to take.

That's not the point I was addressing.

It looks like you've crossed into using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That destroys the spirit of curiosity that HN exists for, and is against the site guidelines. Ditto for comments that cross into being nasty, like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20942577 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21128710 and, unfortunately, others you've posted.

Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of this place more to heart? We'd appreciate it.

That’s what I was literally taught in school. Our required anti-racism lecture in jr high explicitly said that only white people can be racist and only males can be sexist because only they have power.

I understand the point of the argument; systemic oppression comes from power. The argument just seemed odd though.

Well, not really.

The California legislature (for example) is less than half white.[1]

You could argue white males are overrepresented in some circumstances, but claiming white males hold institutional power exclusively (which is what you inferred) is just plain wrong.

[1]https://www.library.ca.gov/Content/pdf/crb/reports/CRB_2017-...

Per your link, the CA Senate is 75% white.

True, but that means 25% of the power is in non-white hands.

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