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Comment by akomtu | Hacker News Reader

"When Tom Snow, who chairs Snow Medical, saw the photo, and realized that everyone was white and male, his heart sank, he says."

So, that Tom doesn't even care about the science, he sees race and gender of applicants and immediately makes a decision.

Edit: if one of those applicants has a novel idea to solve the climate problem, it won't matter to Tom, unless the applicant has appropriate skin color.

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The funny thing is that the picture doesn't even depict the reality.

"James McCluskey, deputy vice-chancellor of research at the university, says that other people, including three women and an Indigenous man, were scheduled to receive honorary awards that day but weren’t able to make it."

So basically all the hoopla was due to some people missing an appointment, a picture and a bunch of assumptions.

"Snow acknowledges that other actions — such as allowing only women or people of colour at the university to apply for the fellowships — might also have been effective."

This is really madness, I wonder if future generations will judge such policies as harshly as we judge policies of the 1930s (such as numerus clausus on Jewish students) today.

This is happening now in Ivy League universities limiting the proportion of students that are Asian.

As a brown man, my heart too would sink. Not because I hate white males, but because it makes me feel as if I'm not adequate. That if no brown men have made it to that point, how could I?

This is all about perspective. Is my perspective here logical? No. Am I blaming these white men? No. Representation matters to minorities. It helps us "feel" like we can actually achieve stuff.

It's difficult to explain this perspective to white people. But too often I see white people dismiss this perspective, seeing it as an attack on _them_. But it really isn't about white people.

If Tom Snow and his snow white friends [1][2][3] would allow brown people like you to help them decide where to direct their fire-hose of equality money we might see some actual progress. A more diverse group of doctors, scientists, and phds sounds great, but until white people let go of some of the money and "leadership positions" they're still going to be calling all the shots.

[1] https://www.snowfoundation.org.au/our-story/board/

[2] https://snowmedical.org.au/about/our-founders/

[3] https://equalityaustralia.org.au/team-members/tom-snow/

Sounds like you've brought a lot of your own bias and preconception to this.

I think his "preconceptions" are pretty much confirmed by the article, as blitzar pointed out above.

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