When you equate power and privilege with my appearance and gender, not only do you dehumanize me and treat me like a caricature, but you seem to assume that I hold some sort of power that makes me immune to your hate -- or you just don't care.
Well, I'm not immune, and I'm sick of it, and if anything, I'd like you and people like you to take your message of prejudice somewhere else.
I never graduated high-school, much less from Stanford with a MBA, and as far as I'm aware, I've never even had a meeting with a VC. I guess we all just "look the same" to you.
I agree that we should be judged as individuals, but if you are white and male, then you should also be aware that you are perceived differently and generally more positively in many situations than minorities and women. If you apply for a job or a loan, you have an advantage. Even without a Stanford MBA, you would have an easier time getting VC funding than more qualified women and minorities.
Let me apply the necessary nuance to your argument to strip away the racism and sexism:
"I agree that we should be judged as individuals, but if you are white and male, then you should also be aware that you are perceived differently and generally more positively in many situations than minorities and women. If you apply for a job or a loan, you [MAY] have an advantage. Even without a Stanford MBA, you [MIGHT] have an easier time getting VC funding than [MANY SIMILARLY QUALIFIED] women and minorities."
In your statement, you ascribed stereotyped attributes to me, and to every situation I might find myself. In doing so, you ask me to accept the core premise that I always have an advantage over others, in every situation, because of my appearance and gender.
Yet, Heidi Roizen, in many ways (but clearly not all ways, as evidenced by her experiences) started from a position of much greater privilege than me. I hope you can see how these things are nuanced, and that sexist/racist stereotypes are convenient but inaccurate, and in aggregate, those stereotypes become very wearing on those of us who, as is often stated by those with your point of view, "do not inhabit positions of power" relative to you.
The "white man" stereotype used to roll off me, because I only saw it on the fringes of impolite society. Now, I see it said regularly and publicly, in popular if not polite company, often in contexts where I don't have "power" and I do find it both demeaning and threatening.
racism requires the assumption of a power dynamic that subjugates the recipient. eg a white guy being called a cracker doesn't resonate with the kinds of cultural practices of oppression that that using racial slurs against a minority carries. it's disingenuous and completely misses the point to equate racism with any time the concept of race is brought up
Some definitions consider that any assumption that a person's behavior would be influenced by their racial categorization is inherently racist, regardless of whether the action is intentionally harmful or pejorative, because stereotyping necessarily subordinates individual identity to group identity.
Tell me how it's not racist to think that all "white guys" are sitting in the better end of a power dynamic when called "a cracker"?
Subsets of academia focused on "critical race theory" might try to redefine "racism" to suite their specific agenda, but I'm content with the dictionary definition:
"the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races."
Retreating to a dictionary definition doesn't argue against the point of the GP comment, namely: a white guy being called a cracker doesn't resonate with the kinds of cultural practices of oppression that that using racial slurs against a minority carries
If you're interested in arguing against that, do so. Posting definitions of words from dictionaries is the height of pedantic laziness in non sequitur form (unless the argument is actually about what the dictionary definition of a word is, of course).
The article didn't actually include the man's race.