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Comment by kenjackson | Hacker News Reader

So that's your counter? Nothing against the actual merit of the statement? White people don't naturally assume they have their positions on merit? How many whites actually think, "Maybe I shouldn't have this position because of the advantage I've been given being white"? Seriously. How often do white males seriously ponder this?

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Are they in that position because they are white, or are they in that position because they were born in privileged families? My country has had predominantly white, male Prime Ministers. What's even more remarkable is that every single one of them over the past 20 years went to highly exclusive private schools. The sort of private school that costs more than a good portion of adults earn, i.e $40k per annum.

When you disparage an entire group based on skin colour and gender, you're being a racist and sexist. You're being highly offensive to the majority of white men who weren't born with silver spoons. If you look at the most successful tech founders you'll see a pattern of them being born into wealthy families with educated parents. 50 years ago, most wealthy and educated families were white, which is why you see so many of these founders today. For example:

Mark Zuckerburg - parents were a psychiatrist and dentist. They literally hired software developers (in the 1990's) to tutor him.

Bill Gates - father was a prominant laywer, mother was on executive boards. Access to computers before they were even a thing.

Sergie Brin - Father was a professor, mother a NASA researcher. Private schools.

Larry Page - Father had a computing professor, mother was a computing instructor. Private schools.

Bezos - wealthy family (Grandfather was regional director of the US Atomic Energy Commision).

larry went to a public high school, as did sergey. neither family was wealthy.

Does the US have public Monterossi schools? Here in Australia they're all private and expensive.

Yes, there are public montessori schools. larry went to a montessori school when he was younger. They are not prohibitively expensive. Sergey's parents were dissidents.

Any argument made that Larry or Sergey had exceptionally monetarily copious upbringings is merely false; they had fairly middle class upbringings by parents who idolized math and science. They both parleyed that through public colleges to positions at Stanford.

Thank you for this.

I’m not even talking about just the wealthiest. How many white firefighters ever question if they got the job because they were white? White people rarely question the accumulated privilege that got them to where they are.

In general, people may more likely believe they got where they are based on merit when they're higher up on the totem pole. That makes sense to me. Where you lose me is when you say that someone's skin color makes them have even more of a tendency (and to say that "of course" that's the way it works).

The poster I was responding to was noting that white people would look askance at blacks on the board, but I assume not whites. Both are at a high position, it only one group would be looked down on for any sort of privilege granted them. It is a function of race. Not an inherent function of being white, but rather the culture that allows white people to always believe “I did this myself”.

> Both are at a high position, it only one group would be looked down on for any sort of privilege granted them. It is a function of race. Not an inherent function of being white, but rather the culture that allows white people to always believe “I did this myself”.

How is "looking down on for any sort of privilege" a function of race? I thought it was a function of the asymmetrical nature of the privilege.

Yes, the asymmetry’a axis is race.

No, it's class. Race is what the privileged use to distract attention from that.

The merit of your statement disparaging people based on their race? Such statements are without merit.

Who have I disparaged based on race?

> No. They think they're there on merit, because well --- of course, they're white.

You leave no room for the possibility that people in such positions are self aware, or even capable of understanding the broader context. I suspect this is what folks are reacting to.

The statement doesn’t apply to every white person, but enough that it never comes up that whites “get looks” due to their privileges.

You don't solve racism by tearing down people, regardless of their color or privilege. You solve it by lifting up those who are disadvantaged.

It's rather amusing you assign the frequency of certain types of thinking to skin color.

Do you think people who are black think "damn, I love chicken/watermelon/grape drink/stealing things/being violent! Do you think people of Asian descent are all good at math?

Like I don't even understand how you can be so blind to the self-referential inconsistency here.

Also, for the record? If you can talk the talk, and walk the walk, or at least demonstrate some aptitude at getting the job done so the person hiring you can be reasonably comfortable they aren't just bringing on an anchor; that is infinitely more likely to factor into getting you a position than skin color.

t. Have Hired and fired

I do think certain lines of thinking are tied to skin color, for white and black people. Not because they are inherent in the color of skin, but because society created the norms for this kind of thinking based on skin color.

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