White Males still enjoy the greatest degree of speaking without fear of retribution, reprisal, or even a contrary response. Some behavior isn’t tolerated like it used to be. Let’s not mischaracterize that as not being able to speak freely.

Uh, what? White males have been speaking freely (and continue to do so) for as long as the concept of racial hierarchy has existed.

The American tech industry is run by (straight) white men, we're doing most of the speaking, highly disproportionate to our representation globally (where the impact of our decision are felt).

Using multiple accounts to give the appearance of multiple voices in an argument is obviously abusive. We ban such accounts and I've banned these.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

There is a cancel culture that has created a chilling effect on the speech of white men, and denying it is gaslighting. White men now have to think more than twice about explaining their extremely interesting opinions about race or about women's appearances/intelligence, especially at work. It's been a slippery slope ever since somebody decided that white people couldn't shout the "N-word," even if they were singing a song or quoting a black person.

I obviously think it's a good thing (but only to the above extent.) But it is bad to tell people that they're crazy, because it makes them upset when they know they're not.

White men are now having to do what every other ethnic/gender group has had to do for hundreds of years; that's not cancel culture, that's growing equity. Thinking before you speak is a great idea, and a lot more people should do it.

And when it comes to technical conversations (the topic of this post), literally none of this is true at all. White men are absolutely and completely free to say literally any work-related thing they want, there is no chilling effect present there.

Using multiple accounts to give the appearance of multiple voices in an argument is obviously abusive. We ban such accounts and I've banned these.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Citation needed. I'll offer another assertion without proof: white males are the most cancellable demographic in the world today.

What, specifically would you like to have cited? White representation in tech? That's easily Googlable, and a number of citations emerge immediately[0][1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10].

As for "cancellable" demographics, that makes a ton of sense; there's a lot of (societally encouraged) entitlement among white men that results in some pretty terrible behavior. Hopefully over time white men will start recognizing how when they act a certain way, it's not the same as when a non white male acts that same way.

[0] https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-06-24...

[1] https://mashable.com/article/diversity-report-silicon-valley...

[2] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/5-eye-opening-statistic...

[3] https://www.umass.edu/employmentequity/sites/default/files/C...

[4] https://www.chill.us/entertainment/2018/10/15/tech-so-white

[5] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3574917/the-state-of-e...

[6] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/11/18/ra...

[7] https://www.eeoc.gov/special-report/diversity-high-tech

[8] https://www.business2community.com/workplace-culture/white-e...

[9] https://www.zippia.com/advice/diversity-in-high-tech-statist...

[10] https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/behavioral-...

None of these references address the broad, cross-cultural historical claim that

"White males have been speaking freely (and continue to do so) for as long as the concept of racial hierarchy has existed."

Sure, if you ignore all the other demographics.

Usually talking anything disagreeable will get you anywhere from passed over for promotion, shitcanned, fired for any imaginary reason of applicable. It affects women more than men, and interacts with racism too as judgements are harsher, so the threshold of what is "unacceptable" is tighter.

> The American tech industry is run by (straight) white men

Microsoft, Google, Adobe, IBM, ....

Also: Nvidia, Apple, Oracle, Broadcom