[TheElder]

As a white male, I felt pretty good in graduate school (for computer science). I was often the only white in my graduate classes. While there were plenty of Chinese, Koreans, and Indians, there weren't any whites. This made me realize what a great opportunity I had. The whites were mainly in liberal arts, business, marketing, accounting, and English. What does that mean for me? It means that my peers, mainly other whites who I'll be competing against, will probably not have CS graduate degrees. Good for me, but probably bad for the overall state of the country.

I worked the entire time during my school career, and that experience is what employers really care about, but I believe it helps that I have a graduate degree when interviewing and getting through the HR door.

[RevRal]

If what you're saying is legitimate, then you need to extrapolate more. There are too many loose ends in your post....

[hooande]

Wow. This is one of the most racist comments I have ever seen on hacker news.

[TheElder]

I'm honestly asking, what is racist about my comment? It's about race, but why is it racist? I don't mean to be racist, nor do I want to be a racist. I removed the article.

[barrkel]

Your post assumes that only "whites" are your peers, and that in competition, non-"whites" are somehow automatically disqualified; and that lack of CS accredited "whites", as opposed to non-"whites" is "probably bad for the overall state of the country", i.e. that the relative status of "whites" has a moral worth.

[bokonist]

If his peer group is in fact white, then it's not racist, just a statement of reality. And as for competition, most people only care about competing within their own peer/status group. And yes, it is bad for the economy if whites are significantly under invested in engineering. It's bad for the economy if anyone or any group is under invested in engineering. Anything "assumed" or implied by his post, is added by you, not by the original poster.

Let's save the racist card/downvotes for when someone actually makes personally disparaging remarks about someone of another race, not when someone just makes earnest and frank observations about society.

[barrkel]

See now, you just equated peer group with status group. If you believe that "white" can be a peer group, then that seems to imply that you also believe that "white" can be a status group, which is a far more troubling scenario.

Racism is not about making disparaging remarks about someone of another race. It's about prejudging, i.e. assuming that certain things are true, just because of that person's race.

[bokonist]

I'm saying that one's peer group is almost alway's one's status group. People don't personally compare themselves/compare self-worth versus a random sample of the population. We compare ourselves to friends, neighbors, classmates, and co-workers.

[ramchip]

I think what he means is that most people from the other countries will go back to their countries once their studies are done, hence most of his peers will be white, and few of them will have benefited from higher education in CS/engineering.

His comment does reference race, but it doesn't sound racist to me.

[barrkel]

Why would you assume that someone is going to "go back" simply because of their skin color? How do you know that he wasn't writing about American citizens of various ethnic origins?

[TheElder]

What you saw as an implied worth for whiteness was my view that most of my peers in school were not US citizens, while most of the white programmers in the university and workforce were and are. Many of those students didn't plan on staying in the US. My wife, who is Asian and a math major, wasn't born in this country, nor were many of our closet friends so I feel as if I have an inside view of these type of things. Not being a citizen seems to have drawbacks. How many job positions have you seen that say no sponsorships, no H1's, or US citizens only? I see this as an advantage for me, a US citizen, English as a first language, programmer with a CS graduate degree.

My previous positions and my current position with a large US company, have and is, composed of nearly all white developers. In effect, my peers are white, and probably most of the HN's community has a similar experience.

[barrkel]

Your peers are developers; the distinguishing criterion is not race. By using one criterion as shorthand for another, as you seem to be doing, is prejudging. The way you write makes it sound like your non-white co-workers are not your peers.