...for god's sake. I'm one of the few non-Asian minorities on HN, so maybe a Mexican can be honest where whites may be forced to be sensitive.

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(1) "But when I introduce myself in the classroom, I’m Dr. Berry. And I insist on being Dr. Berry."

I take issue with insistence on the "doctor" title when applied to non-medical fields. This reluctance is based on the deluge of worthless doctorates that increasingly occupy my Facebook feed as I age.

While her field of electrical engineering is one for which I have a superstitious dread and respect, since I struggled with elementary calculus and depend on tip calculators at restaurants -- the fact is that it IS really obnoxious to insist on the title when you're not a medical doctor.

I have a juris doctor, making me as much of a doctor as she is. Any lawyer who insisted on the title would be laughed out of the profession, and rightfully so. Frankly, any industry where non-medical doctorates are not routinely ashamed of pretentious titles is probably not a very rigorous or worthwhile field. While electrical engineering is certainly not either of those, she admits that most of her colleagues do not insist on being called doctors. Is it so offensive when her students conform to industry standards of etiquette?

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(2) "Having worked with thousands of students, I know for a fact that for many — though by no means all, or even most — there is already a presumption that I, as a female and African-American, am less qualified than my white male colleagues, or at the very least that I was hired in order to meet a double minority quota. And I get it — anti-affirmative-action ideologues have managed to not only demolish the legitimacy of that policy, but tar the reputation of anyone who might have benefited from it (even if, like me, they did not)."

Unless she did not mark that she was black on her application, yes, she almost certainly did benefit from affirmative action and racial quotas. As did I.

Like her, I competed for seats against a pool of minority candidates with far lower scores than the white or Asian pools. (Asians require ridiculously high scores for competitive opportunities at the same schools.) The simple fact is that we ARE less qualified for our opportunities than our white and Asian counterparts. This doesn't mean we can't outperform the competition, but we definitely got a boost in securing our positions.

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(3) "How do I know? Sometimes it’s just a sense, a feeling I get from people’s tone of voice. But some students will automatically call me Ms., while naturally referring to my male counterparts as Doctor or Professor. I’m not alone: When I meet fellow female engineering professors at conferences, this sort of treatment is always a topic of conversation."

Not that her vague feeling of offense isn't valid or anything, but this doesn't really seem worthy of a New York Times article.

Her most concrete examples are where a student "offered tips on how I could improve [my lecture]," and where others had trouble understanding her. Maybe she's not the most talented of lecturers?

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(4) "So what can I do? I already have to run faster and jump higher just to gain that minimal level of respect that my colleagues are graciously, automatically afforded. But I can also insist that my students interact with me in a professional manner, even if it’s not something they’re accustomed to in other classes."

Again, she almost certainly has not had to run faster or jump higher than her colleagues. The dearth of women (and especially black women) in engineering pits her against a much less competitive pool of candidates to fill minimally acceptable quotas. By her own numbers, there are only 140 black women working as engineering professors "out of some 24,640 across the entire field (not including computer engineering)." It takes serious balls to declare this void the fault of a racist engineering conspiracy rather than the simple failure of black women to compete in rigorous fields.

It's certainly possible that she has outperformed her Asian male counterparts, but I would like to see her list such accomplishments as evidence that she did, indeed, run faster and jump higher.

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(5) "I decided to become an engineering professor 20 years ago while sitting in class and realizing that I had never had a professor who looked like me, acted like me or even seemed interested in me. I was typically one of only two or three female students, and one of only one or two African-American students. I wanted to change the face of engineering by showing that the profession could be cool, interesting, exciting, engaging and, most important, diverse. In that way, insisting that students use my title isn’t just about me — it’s about broadcasting, to any female and black students who might hear it, that I am black, a woman, and an engineer, and that they can be the same."

This is where I lose the thread. It is not an accomplishment to be black. I am not a role model because I am Mexican. If I communicate without clarity, my audience is not racist. If there are relatively few competitive Mexicans in my field, that signals a severe problem with Mexican culture and families -- not with the institutions that hire me, particularly when they go out of their way to promote less-qualified minorities!

It's great that she wants to be a role model. So do I. But aside from insisting on a pretentious title, what accomplishments has she listed that kids might look up to? Literally the only thing we know about her in this article is that her students have trouble following her lectures. Also, she's a black woman. Does that a role model make?

We as minorities should not be judged by radically lowered expectations compared to our peers. Can you imagine an Asian man publishing this article and expecting sympathy?