@wim_v12e I gather that white man tech privilege is also very big (in my experience not as big as Asian man tech privilege, if I can extrapolate from my experience—I remember being called out exactly one time in my career for not having a clue what I was talking about, my white male colleagues much more).

Like Guo says, (maybe) you and (def) I faced far fewer microaggressions and overt hostility in school and early career than our female, black, gay, trans, &c. colleagues.

@wim_v12e I am absolutely not someone who has “grit”. If I faced any of the difficulties that my spouse (embedded engineer) or black or gay colleagues faced in electrical engineering or software dev, I would have dropped out long long ago and pursued a career with less pain.

Instead I was given all the space and encouragement needed to figure out FFTs, SVDs, MPI, SIMD, etc., at my slow plodding easily-distracted pace, and fell in love with tech. It makes me mad and sad.

@wim_v12e Ah, I forgot that in a follow up blog post, Guo describes his interview with a national radio show:

http://pgbovine.net/tech-privilege-NPR-interview.htm

(Not as essential as the original http://pgbovine.net/tech-privilege.htm of course)

And there the interviewer asked if he was grateful for the privilege he received. Which tells me they didn’t understand the problem well. How can I be grateful that I was born with the characteristics that society associated with coders? While others *better* than me are routinely dismissed?

@22 I suppose from a selfish perspective you could be grateful to society for making your life easier compared to that of others.

Anyway, I understand now what you mean, your privilege is specifically for tech. Mine of course is for almost everything, which is really sad.

@wim_v12e I usually think that privilege hurts those who have it just as much as those who lack it, directly (inaccurate self-image) and indirectly (society's loss of talent and skill)?

I hesitate to think that those with privilege have easier lives—that may derive from general Buddhist principles I subscribe to (everyone feels their life's suffering equally intensely, except Buddhist sages: apparently they feel everyone else's suffering 🙃).

@wim_v12e And actually, no, when I say "Asian tech man privilege", I don't at all mean to say, 'I have privilege but its circumscribed to tech'—that might be true perhaps?, but then again, I'm a tall, skinny, healthy, light-skinned dude with PhD parents, I'm pretty aware that I have privilege in spades outside tech too. Reginald Braithwaite (awesome JavaScript dev/author) on this: https://twitter.com/raganwald/status/750028776549920768

I just mean, "I don't just have tech privilege, I have *ASIAN MAN* tech privilege 🧞‍♂️!"

@22 Well, all my life I have been told that for one reason or another *I* have it easy 😐. But what I meant is, as you say, a person with privileges gets a lot of slack, fewer barriers, so easier in that sense. Of course it does not mean they're happier, or that they don't have to work hard.

@22 What puzzles me regarding this privilege: I teach students from all over the world, and it is certainly not the case that I or my colleagues automatically assume that the male Asian students will do well, nor that the female students would not do well. Our evidence points in the other direction.

@wim_v12e yes it’s very ignorant and unjust, like all discrimination—having a prior on a person’s ability/behavior based on some visible group marker, and possibly never updating those beliefs, instead of just having uninformative priors and evaluating evidence as it arrives, looking for the good & bad both in each person.

I sometimes think we’re so close to defeating discrimination, between object lessons on its destructiveness and the benefits of openness and the usefulness of meditation but…

@wim_v12e @22 I'm British Asian and I don't see it as much in education or healthcare industry in UK (both of which are very multicultural) but have encountered it in "normal" social settings - including routinely being mistaken for a *medical* professional, to the point I ended up having to suggest appropriate first aid for a lass who took too many drugs at a party (at least she survived)

@vfrmedia @22 Based on observation I'd say there is more bias amongst our students than amongst the academics. We definitely have our share but on the whole academia is strongly merit-based. The bias issue is a bit different from the privilege issue, of course: most academics will be from privileged backgrounds.

@wim_v12e Ugh, I can guess that being told you've had it easy your whole life is very very obnoxious. That is exactly the same thing my spouse (a woman) complained about too: “you’re the diversity hire”, “your boyfriend helped you with your your homework”. The worst I got of that was my mom saying “eat your lima beans, kids are starving in Africa!” Which wasn’t even in the same league.

Thanks for reminding me about this. For me privilege was silent (Guo). I will remember for others it’s not.