Here it's people trying to insert their affirmative action narratives and also rant about California a bit (in a backhanded way).
We can do better.
I'm not surprised techies are inherently interested in some socio-political stuff. Especially a topic like education where they may feel it should be an egalitarian endeavor (the interpretation of "egalitarian" inevitably causes conflicts, of course).
>any mention of certain cities or states, even in a tech context, brings out the culture warriors.
any mention of any high level topic will bring them out. I don't know what to say about that. As long as they are engaging with the topic and arguments and not devolving into attacking users or spreading hate, there's nothing wrong with a strongly opinionated comment.
I think about it information theoretically. Oversimplifying, the information content of something is how unpredictable it is in a given channel. On HN, in 2023, the information content of yet another comment ranting about some given city or state or group of people is basically zero. Everyone has seen those comments a thousand times recently and it adds nothing to the discussion.