Re:Women Engineers on the Rampant Sexism of Silicon Valley
by AnimalMuppet on Thursday June 08, 2017 @01:17PM
(#14515574)
I think it may depend on how it's done.
If I have a coworker of color, and I want to find out where they're from because I presume they can't be from here, sure, they might be justified in considering that a microaggression.
If I ask where they're from because that's something people talk about, and I want to treat them like a human coworker rather than like a programming robot, hopefully they can tell the difference between that and the first reason for asking.
If they can't tell the difference, or if they've run into the first kind so often that even the second kind grates on them, fine, I'll not ask if they tell me not to. But I don't think it's objectively reasonable to assume that the second kind of asking is unwelcome.
(And yes, I'm well aware that people who are doing the first kind of asking are going to claim that they're doing the second kind of asking...)
If I have a coworker of color, and I want to find out where they're from because I presume they can't be from here, sure, they might be justified in considering that a microaggression.
If I ask where they're from because that's something people talk about, and I want to treat them like a human coworker rather than like a programming robot, hopefully they can tell the difference between that and the first reason for asking.
If they can't tell the difference, or if they've run into the first kind so often that even the second kind grates on them, fine, I'll not ask if they tell me not to. But I don't think it's objectively reasonable to assume that the second kind of asking is unwelcome.
(And yes, I'm well aware that people who are doing the first kind of asking are going to claim that they're doing the second kind of asking...)