I read some of the comments with good counter arguments against this article, and I must say this.

Racism, like courtesy, is a two-way street. In the same way as saying something like “you look like s***!” to a friend who is self-aware and sensitive to their appearance can be hurtful and rude, saying something blatant about a race to a person identified as that race, which has also been subjected to abuses of all kinds, underrepresented, and lately, targeted for random act of violence, can and should be deem racist.

Here is a real-world example: I was once having a drink with a few colleagues when someone brought up their immigration story. “Coming to the West Coast, that was the first time I ever saw an Asian.” Another followed, “Yeah, me too.” They were both identified as Caucasian from Europe and Russia, and we were in a bar in Mountain View. They both had a good laugh about it. I didn’t.

Skeptics will reverse the situation and come up with counter-arguments, which I think is moot. They don’t work both ways. If the colleagues were Asian and Black, and they were talking about seeing a white person for the first time in the US, it wouldn’t have been racism because White American, for the longest time in the history of this colony, has been identified as the aggressor and oppressor of other ethnicities. It would have been a equivalent of saying “You look like hell!” To Paris Hilton.

So yes, I do feel that Asian racism is in the air in the tech industry, and we are just being included for our smarts, not for who we are. Moreover, the silence in the tech industry,especially from Asian leaders and entrepreneurs, is condemning.