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Comment by nanna | Hacker News Reader

So what? Why does this bother you? Young black women are hugely under-represented in STEM fields, so this is a nice story of someone breaking through that and it gets coverage.

The insinuation is that she doesn't deserve it, that she was only awarded this because she is a young black woman. Are you really placed to judge this? Do you know the ins-and-outs of the award criteria, what the other candidates were like, have you concertedly worked through your anti-black prejudices? No offence but I doubt all three.

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I think their point is: is this getting coverage because it’s actually novel and impressive, or is this relative simple but getting attention because of her race/gender?

In other words: Is the coverage a good signal for whether one should be impressed or not.

It may have merit on inspiring others, particularly underrepresented groups, but I think that’s only adjacent to the parents question of: is this impressive in a vacuum, or just getting traction because of her gender/race, which presumably the parent doesn’t find to be important.

Accusations of “anti black prejudices” may be wrong if their actual point is that the news is prejudicially covering otherwise non newsworthy work primarily because of the gender/race of the creator.

Can we cut the bullshit here and just be curious about the science? For fuck's sake.

No, we can't. HN has a lot of thin-skinned snowflakes who are threatened by almost everything, while priding themselves on being "smart".

Ouch. First time I've heard the alt-right slur 'snowflake' used here on HN. Hope this isn't a sign of the direction we're going.

Remember this isn't Gab, folks?

I agree. The problem is that if this is undeserving news coverage of a nonnewsworthy accomplishment, it’s misinformation and has all the problems and baggage associated. It’s incorrect info pushed as truth, in connotation or definition, and that builds up.

I also competed in the sts this year, so i do know the criteria very well; i can tell you with certainty that there were far more impressive and exciting projects in the top 40.

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