StackOverflow to becoming more welcoming. 👏
For me (cis het dude with monster-sized Asian tech privilege), learning to StackOverflow properly was certainly a learning experience, and I have the closed questions to prove it. I've also gotten enough useful feedback through it (and other StackExchanges, like GIS and statistics) that I try to give back by "mentoring" & showing how to improve the question.
Downvoting unhelpful comments is a great start. I see that too much.
@22 Can I ask what this Asian tech privilege is?
@wim_v12e Wow. After all these years, reading Dr Guo’s experience there sends chills of recognition down my spine.
“Instead of facing implicit bias or stereotype threat, I had the privilege of implicit endorsement. For instance, whenever I attended technical meetings, people would assume that I knew what I was doing (regardless of whether I did or not) and treat me accordingly.”
😱
@22 Ah, I see, so because of your being Asian, people automatically assume you are good at tech?
The reason for my question is, is there then no such thing as "European/American/Australian/... tech privilege"?
I'm trying to see how this relates to my situation.
@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 @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.