[samgtx]

It's telling that your comment is currently 2nd ranked. It comes across generous "there are bright math kids everywhere" but really boils down to "don't talk about how they're black" and "don't talk about how they're women." And finished with "my male friend was disadvantaged, the conversation should be about that."

Obviously a large number of the HN crowd agrees with you because these types of comments always land at the top of any article praising a woman or underrepresented minority for their accomplishments. "Why does it matter? We are all people." That's very easy to say when you are in the position of not having your accomplishments and intelligence questioned based on your race or gender. And it shows how homogeneous the HN community is that these types of comments continue to be upvoted to the top.

Representation matters. When you have no concept of what it is like to be black in the deep south. Or to be a woman in the deep south, much less both, you have no appreciation for why stories like this are so interesting and inspiring to the people who relate to them.

[yafbum]

> It's telling that your comment is currently 2nd ranked.

Fwiw i think only because it's relatively recent. Not a lot of upvotes currently.

> It comes across generous "there are bright math kids everywhere" but really boils down to "don't talk about how they're black" and "don't talk about how they're women." And finished with "my male friend was disadvantaged, the conversation should be about that."

Wow now I think you're reading a lot more into it than what I wrote.

> Obviously a large number of the HN crowd agrees with you because these types of comments always land at the top of any article praising a woman or underrepresented minority for their accomplishments. "Why does it matter? We are all people."

That's not actually my claim. I do agree that representation matters. But I find it condescending when someone's accomplishments are only ever mentioned in the same sentence as some statistically surprising fact about their identity, as if what we were saying here is "not bad for a X". (And fwiw I do find it condescending when I'm a recipient of such praise in settings where I'm in the minority.)

[zelphirkalt]

I think many are simply tired of having scientific or mathematical or technological progress updates, that should be about the thing that is actually new, intermingled with political agenda or racism. Not everything needs to be turned into a discussion about race or the disadvantaged. It is not helpful and it is not on-topic. Many people don't like being off-topiced and would rather engage in on-topic discussion.

Articles which put much emphasis on these things are often coming across as racist themselves, because of the underlying meaning "Even a X can do it!" as if it was something unusual that an X actually manged to do whatever the article is about. Often this kind of expressed surprise hints at more racism of the authors of such an article, as it shows, that they still try to establish an associtation between race and ability.

In a way the "we are all people" mindset is less racist than all of the acting surprised about a X being able to do it and focussing on the "they are a X" aspect mindset.

[4dayworkweek4u]

How much of ancient and modern math was developed by group B?

[allenu]

I read through the article as well and was put off mostly by how it was presented that the students are black females:

> They are female, they are African-American, and they come from an area which is not particularly renowned for producing high academic achievers. This is just an awesome turn of events and one which should inspire anyone — no matter what their gender, ethnic or socio-demographic background — that excellence in your chosen field of study is always attainable if you have enough joy and passion for what you do.

I'm a person of color myself (not black) and seeing this statement (and the fact that the author is white) made it come across as "Look, even a black female can excel in math if they have enough joy and passion in what they do." On the surface, it seems like an innocuous statement, but what it really reads is "the only thing holding you back as an underrepresented person in society, especially being black and female, is your joy and passion, so keep working at it and you too can excel at math". It just reads as tone deaf to me.

My point is there's a way to present the fact that they're black and female, but you have to be careful how you word it because it can otherwise come across as almost condescending.

[duneisagoodbook]

well said