All the Rights and Privileges

If you’ve graduated from a U.S. university, you get a degree and a piece of paper that includes the words: “with all the Rights, Privileges, and Honors thereunto appertaining” or some such, perhaps in Latin. And you know that your Master of Fine Arts, or fine Doctor of Philosophy degree doesn’t give you any real rights or honors.

Being a white dude, in science and technology, even in the early 21st century, still does deliver privileges. I know, I’m one. And, what’s more, my wife, more brilliant than I, with more degrees to her name (I think), gets fewer rights and honors and privileges.

Read her post, then, to see what it’s like when a self-proclaimed member of Europe’s aristocracy (didn’t they die or become irrelevant in 1917 or something?), describing himself as a startup CEO, admits he hasn’t hired any women or minorities because, ahem, well, no coherent reason was given. At no point did he stop to understand that my wife’s startup was more renowned, with deeper tech content, than his. Of course, a self-proclaimed member of aristocracy has no idea what the struggles of the peasantry are like. But this is 2019 and a company, and particularly a startup company, needs to get the best talent it can — and to use the best talent as well it can. Not just hiring people who look like me, white dudes.

LINK HERE