[jfarmer]

I don't want to derail the conversation since the #1 hurdle is the collective blindness people have to the concept on HN and in the tech community at large. It's a complex thing to understand and I don't claim to understand it perfectly or even well.

Everyone is privileged in certain ways that make them blind to other types of privilege. Feminists use the word "intersectionality" to describe this state of affairs.

Anyhow, the point (IMO) is to learn how to navigate in the world without unknowingly exercising your privilege to the detriment of others, like an oafish tourist who walks right through the middle of someone's rock garden because they didn't know any better and when they're informed respond with, "It was just a bunch of stupid rocks! What's the big deal?"

If you grok the concept of privilege, great! My experience is that on HN virtually nobody does. tptacek's comment above is the clearest I've ever seen on the subject here.

[mercer]

Spot on! Maybe it's beneficial to use a term that doesn't make people defensive ('privileged? me? I worked hard to get where I am!), but I do agree it's important to make people aware of it.

A week or so ago one of our former Dutch politicians wrote a column about 'the elite' in Holland. This resulted in a highly entertaining but tragic borderline-flamewar between said politician and some well-known Dutch people. Entertaining because it was fascinating to see such 'impactful' people commenting on an internet forum, and tragic because the discussion became about the term 'elite' and the perceived insult by the 'accused' individuals, rather than about the point of the article: pointing out the reality of there being an 'elite' and asking some relatively open questions on what this realization means.