3 ms·
Most people generally aren't comfortable conflating certain flukes of genetics and social privileges with merit. Being born affluent, white, and male are the t
by msbarnett 16y ago
Most people generally aren't comfortable conflating certain flukes of genetics and social privileges with merit.
Being born affluent, white, and male are the three factors which for the last couple of decades have made you statistically most likely to have owned your own computer prior to college. Because most people don't consider males to have more merit than females, or white people to be more meritorious than minority groups, declaring programming a meritocracy ignores and conceals these important factors in the makeup of the "programmers" social group.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoMost people generally aren't comfortable conflating certain flukes of genetics and social privileges with merit. No one is doing this. I am defining "merit" to be the ability/willingness to write good code. If the universe has decided to allocate merit (defined as above) to white/asian males, so be it. That doesn't mean that my definition of merit is flawed. It merely means that the universe has not behaved in the manner you wish it did.