The world of coding is a meritocracy. Every day, I deal with people from the other side of the planet and, as far as I know, from other planets as well. I couldn't care less if they have challenging accents or antennae on their heads. Many of them deliver the goods, and some of them are bullshitters. It's the same all over the galaxy. I work hard at establishing a professional relationship with the coders, tunnelling through levels of bullshitting management, and my cross-planetary projects work out ok.

I am German, and I suppose I can take pride in the fact that a bunch of folks from related tribes (surely not the pig and potato farmers from whom I descended) invented calculus (Leibniz, not Newton--I realize those are fighting words, but humor me...) and built the first electromechanical computer (Zuse, not Eckert/Mauchly). And of course the Germans (including some members of my tribe) did terrible acts at other times. I guess as a German you put all this in perspective and figure it's not where you came from but what you do yourself.

But when I teach, I do face students who  think that because who they are or are not, or who their ancestors were or were not, it makes a difference in whether or not they will succeed in what should be the most democratic of all skills, i.e. coding.

When I think of the many people I worked with who are talented programmers, it is striking how little they have in common. They come from all countries, are social butterflies or introverts, are musicians or atonal, have antennae or not, but they all can code. That's a good message to get out to students. It doesn't matter if you are Greek or Iranian or Martian. A percentage of people, no matter from what origin, are really good at programming, and there is a pretty good chance you are among them.