Jesus Christ. Here's a thought, treat them as people and not "a black" or "a woman". You don't have to ingratiate yourself in the fear that some random person will think you're a racist. He's just a person going about his day delivering packages. He's got his own worries and concerns and things going on in his mind.

"Is becoming a racist the best solution, so I'm able to function more effectively?" I can't tell if you're being tongue-in-cheek here or have genuine social issues. My (admittedly somewhat harsh) advice is to close your IDE and go interact - in person - with other humans.

> He's just a person going about his day delivering packages. He's got his own worries and concerns and things going on in his mind.

Of course. He could also be vigilantly looking for 'racists'. I really don't know. I'm using the theory of mind to construct a possible world view. My data set is Twitter/HN/reddit, mainly.

I would love to treat everyone like a person, but if I do I leave myself vulnerable to accusations. Since anything I do can be perverted into a racist/sexist narrative.

I'm all for empathy and kindness. Not at my own expense, though. It's a reaction to a hostile environment.

> My (admittedly somewhat harsh) advice is to close your IDE and go interact - in person - with other humans.

I've done enough of that. I want to concentrate on ideas/code/mathematics/philosophy. The abstract.

Speak your mind anyway. Many people on HN are under the same chilling effect as you. They say things they don't even believe because it's the right thing to say in coastal California.

In this day and age, you'll probably receive a couple of false accusations of racism and sexism per thousand interactions. You'll never be safe, so at least be honest.

If we're all dishonest, the tyrants win.

Aside: your postman sees people all day, he doesn't have time to assess your racial ideology (or lack thereof). Just be polite and receive your package. If he's being a dick, call him out. I had a UPS guy who would come by basically every day for a month, he'd announce my name from the package, but he'd always find a new way to mispronounce it (clearly intentional, he'd be grinning the whole time). His race never came to mind when I told him to go fuck himself when I switched to DHL.

I know that it's hard to imagine, but most non-white people are not the loony social justice types you see here and across the internet. In the U.S. West, some people are on edge w.r.t race because of their upbringing, but even then most are perfectly reasonable. You can probably tell which type of person you're working with by looking at them.

HN/reddit/twitter is a horrible barometer for how people act in the real world; there is no negative consequence or conflict if you attack someone or accuse someone of something online. Nobody is developing personal friendships on reddit, or posting on HN as part and parcel of what they need to do in order to get through their day.

In real life people are just trying to get through their day, and if you're decent and polite to people they will usually appreciate and reciprocate it. Black people aren't walking around hunting for racists. Nobody is walking around looking to accuse others of things in real life. The guy has a job to do and he wants to do it. He appreciates people who are nice and friendly, and doesn't appreciate people who are nasty and mean, just like anyone with a job.

You are always vulnerable to accusations, no matter what you do, no matter who you talk to. You could be accused of anything at any time. If somebody wants to be a jerk and make your day worse they can do that. But the vast majority of people don't. Walking into an interaction with someone else, almost everyone wants it to be polite and friendly. All you can do is try to do your best to treat everyone like a person and be decent. Don't let toxic Internet culture stop you from developing friendships in the real world. The environment is not hostile, even if it seems like it is because us tech people are extremely online. If something bad happens, shrug it off as the rare one-off crazy event that it is and move on.

> HN/reddit/twitter is a horrible barometer for how people act in the real world

And still they act as powerful feedback loops going back into the real world. Let's hope it's a loop that is improving over time.

If you choose to focus exclusively on the abstract you choose to live in a world where all of these conflicts are permanently laid out in stark contrast. The reason your mailman, for example, has no reason to have a problem with you is because he is focused on the practical and material reality of doing his job. The reason the speaker in the article was able to respond gently is because she has a working relationship with the journalist who interrupted her.

Minus the real ties people develop between each other, and the interest in having a comfortable environment around them, human history has more than enough wrongs documented to justify everyone's anger against everyone else.

And now you find yourself vigilantly looking for 'people who are eager to cry racism', and now the rest of us have to tiptoe around that lest we set off your alarms and you go on some sort of defensive rampage.

See how creating a hostile environment works?

> > My (admittedly somewhat harsh) advice is to close your IDE and go interact - in person - with other humans.

> I've done enough of that.

I promise you haven't.

>Here's a thought, treat them as people and not "a black" or "a woman". You don't have to ingratiate yourself in the fear that some random person will think you're a racist.

I think you need to read through this thread. People are assigning motivations to the host: "He is sexist". Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. I'm sure he'd say that he is not, but plenty of people here are saying he is. Is it crazy to think the same thing can happen to, say, the OP?

An easy solution is to give less fucks what other people think and just try not to be a dick.

Most of the time. There's a monologue near the end of Team America: World Police that goes further into the nuances of it. Basically, don't be a dick, unless you're talking to an asshole.

Hah, I love that monologue! If we're gonna go from silly to serious though, I would argue that even when talking to an asshole, not sinking to their level is the better solution on so many levels.

I concur.

I've had many of the same thoughts. To the point that I think I've become more racist because of them. Isn't that what racism is? Treating someone different because of their skin color?

I've instead resolved to think and worry less about it. I know I don't treat people different because of skin color, and that's good enough. If I'm rude to someone and they think it's race or gender related, that's their problem, not mine. (And I'm generally not a rude person, so it's not like happens all that often anyhow.)

What really started me down this path was a friend of mine (she's a "person of color") who honestly believes that "all white people are racist", "it's impossible to be racist against white people", and "all cops are corrupt", among other things.

After a while, I started to worry that all non-white people thought everyone was being racist all the time. Her poison infected me to the point that every time I passed a co-worker, I'd wonder if thought I was doing something racist at that moment.

I wasn't. I knew I wasn't. But I worried that they thought so.

But unless they're really good at hiding those feelings, they aren't thinking that. I know some of them well enough to know they'd show some outward sign of discomfort if that were the case.

In the end, I decided my friend was toxic to her own cause. Her constant (racist) posts about racism actually pushed me in the wrong direction, and I've had to correct for it.

Instead, I recognize that it's a kind of mental illness to expect everyone to be racist to you. Not just to guard against it, but to actually expect it. It's also a mental illness to think that nobody else could experience what you do, or understand it without actually experiencing it.

I can't fix those people. I can't only walk away and let them think whatever they want. I'll keep being a good person, and they'll have to deal with any bad feelings they're creating out of nothing.

I don't know your friend so I can't speak to directly to her specific behaviors, but I know a lot of people like your friend and I think it might be helpful for you if you considered her thoughts from a different perspective - Perhaps you may not be personally 'racist', and perhaps you don't feel 'racist', but there is enough objective science based evidence to conclude that we live in a society that highly favors whiteness over browness and blackness. And if you're a white person in a society that favors whiteness, you benefit from that favoritism. That benefit is what people are calling a system of 'white privilege' and 'systemic racism'. So as a person who benefits from these systems, and has never experienced what it's like to be on the other side of this system, it's possible (likely even) that you've unconsciously learned some behaviors that contribute to this system. So her words may not be an attack on you personally, it's just a very blunt way of acknowledging something that has been proven (scientifically) time and time again. White privilege exists, all white people benefit from it...

The last thing I want to say is that something can be racist even if there is no intent to be racist. The outcome is what matters. There are millions of perfectly nice people who don't intentionally do racist things that still end up contributing to racism because of subconscious bias that have been instilled in them by our society.

Just an example - http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes-...

I doubt these companies are intentionally expressing bias towards minorities, but the outcome is a hiring process that requires them to 'mask' their identity, a burden that white people don't have to bear. And if you don't have to bear a burden carried by a large percentage of people unlike yourself, that's a privilege...

I'm not denying that society is tilted in my favor. That's been clear to me since I was young and had minority scholarships explained to me.

I'm not talking about that, though. I'm saying that she literally says, "All white people are racist." And she means it.

She also literally says that there's no such thing as racism towards white people because it's not racism if that society isn't tilted in their favor.

Yes, I know what "institutional racism" is. I also know what plain old "racism" is. It probably doesn't affect me nearly as much as it does any random minority, but that doesn't mean it isn't racism.

And any racism contributes to racism in general. You can't treat someone like shit and then expect them to treat you better. It's foolish.

What you're experiencing is the fact that short-circuiting, unconscious emotions can only be hidden—not fixed—by the pressure of social stigma.

The solution touches on a concept I've struggled to describe to others—that there is a divide between truths that we consciously know (fed by culture) and beliefs we unconsciously feel (fed by emotion). Empathy (the actual experience of a person's problems not the "imagine yourself in their shoes" kind) is the only thing that fully informs our unconscious emotions. See the famous Jane Elliott "Blue eyes–Brown eyes" exercise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHxFuO2Nk-0

What I like about our current hyper-aware culture is that I think it will eventually lead to an acknowledgement of the nature of this divide, and we will soon be acknowledging many other -isms that fall into this category for which there are many. I hope the overwhelming nature of it will not cause us to throw our hands up and resign to it all, but rather cause us to consciously decide when it is appropriate to turn off empathy (creating consciously accepted -isms), rather than letting it be determined to the whims of a culture out of ignorance (hidden unconscious -isms). I hope to see future cultures unfold in this sort of way.

Have you been tested for Autism/Asperger's?

I ask because I am on the spectrum and have a similar anxiety with how people will think of me during interactions. This stems from a difficulty in reading other people. Over many years I have developed internal scripts of standard behaviour for interacting with people in different circumstances. So long as I am able to stay on script, I have learnt to worry less about what people think.

I've not been tested. My doctor suggested autism last time I went to see her -- due to the level of detailed research I'd done on a condition.

I do like to think in terms of systems. I used to be good at reading people. I've never heard of anyone becoming autistic. I do take a significant number of medications/supplements for a medical condition. That could be having an effect on my affect.

My recommendation is not become a racist. But maybe instead to treat everyone with the same sense of care that you are making the effort to do for a minority. You can't go wrong treating people with respect and empathy.

For me the solution is to try to consciously be nice to people. Then I don't have to be extra-nice to anybody, because I'm already being nice.

It's interesting that you mention the problem of "an incorrect model" but not the many other problems with "becoming racist". I think you may have an unusual way of seeing the world. My advice: be basically polite to everyone, and don't worry about other people's wrong assumptions about you.

The best idea is to stop worrying. If you're a racist someone will write a comment about it and then, when it makes it big on HN, you may reflect upon your errors.

Are you sure your not more of a classist than racist? If the person were your race would still feel obligated to be nice because they were performing a service for you? Or maybe your just a dick and being nice to people in general is a chore. I know that's my problem.

> Or maybe your just a dick and being nice to people in general is a chore. I know that's my problem.

Maybe I am a dick. I don't respect people unless they've earned my respect. I try not to be rude. It may seem like that if I'm in a hurry.

I am rude if someone interrupts me with bullshit.

> I don't respect people unless they've earned my respect.

That's... just wrong. For one thing, everyone deserves a baseline level of respect as per our shared human dignity. Also living in a world where nobody is worth the time of day unless they've gone out of the way to prove themselves respectable just sounds miserable.

You should respect everyone unless they've done something to lose your respect.

People deserve politeness, not respect.

If you're a white heterosexual male you're probably not used to being uncomfortable because the whole world was made for you. You don't feel uncomfortable when you see the police. You don't feel uncomfortable walking down your street at night by yourself. You don't feel uncomfortable going to your church. You don't feel uncomfortable kissing your spouse in the street.

In my opinion, the discomfort you're feeling is nothing compared to the others I described. So get used to it. We do the right thing because it's right, not because it's easy.

There's a valid point somewhere in here that could be made, but this doesn't make it very well.

You see, even as middle-class heterosexual white male... I still very much AM uncomfortable when dealing with police. I AM uncomfortable walking down a street alone at night (even in my own neighborhood). I WOULD feel awkward and self-conscious kissing my spouse in the middle of a street. I'm not sure if my mental wiring matches the majority of white people or not. But it definitely reflects a significant portion, if it's not flat-out "the norm".

If any groups outside of heterosexual white males feel wronged because they don't feel such a level of comfort, then I imagine they will forever feel wronged. Because it doesn't describe MY comfort level, either. When people read stuff that's written this starkly, it is EXTREMELY easy to dismiss the concept of privilege. Because your description of white male life simply doesn't match our experience.

> If you're a white heterosexual male you're probably not used to being uncomfortable because the whole world was made for you.

I was close to homeless a couple of times -- when I was younger. That didn't make the world feel like it was made for me.

> You don't feel uncomfortable when you see the police.

The last police I saw stopped their car and watched me walk down the road.

> You don't feel uncomfortable walking down your street at night by yourself.

Depends on where I am.

> You don't feel uncomfortable going to your church.

I don't believe in God. There's no evidence. There also seem to be many groups claiming their God is the correct God. The probability of picking the correct God seems low: given an infinite search space.

> You don't feel uncomfortable kissing your spouse in the street.

I don't have a spouse. And am probably not going to have a gf for a long time. I've had some health problems and the last girl I liked didn't like me back.

> In my opinion, the discomfort you're feeling is nothing compared to the others I described. So get used to it. We do the right thing because it's right, not because it's easy.

I'll take that into consideration.

Not to underplay that growing up as, say, a black American in the projects comes with a whole host of horrific challenges, but this comment is incredibly sexist + racist.

>> You don't feel uncomfortable when you see the police.

I become incredibly uncomfortable around police, for many good reasons

>> You don't feel uncomfortable walking down your street at night by yourself

This as completely untrue. I've been followed several times by very shady people, and had one guy start charging me in the middle of the night from three blocks down - I jumped into a random taxi full of adrenaline. We were the only two people on the street as far as the eye could see.

I've also had to redirect myself into crowded areas in the middle of daylight after shady characters were following me.

Why is that? I live right beside a homeless camp and often these characters are shooting up on the street and then will yell at you about how they are going to "fucking murder" you. You'd probably be shocked to know that 95% of them are white males who were screwed by society.

>> You don't feel uncomfortable going to your church

I grew up going to church and always felt uncomfortable, it felt off to me. But I don't understand the point of this comment. I guess virtue signaling?

>> You don't feel uncomfortable kissing your spouse in the street

Damn right I don't. I can take you down streets where all sorts of minorities don't feel this way either. More virtue signaling?

>> In my opinion, the discomfort you're feeling is nothing compared to the others I described. So get used to it. We do the right thing because it's right, not because it's easy.

This is virtue signaling at its prime.

> I live right beside a homeless camp [...] You'd probably be shocked to know that 95% of them are white males

There's a number of very vocal anti-racist or anti-sexist that seem to ignore or downplay discrimination based on class, employability and mental health.

This can be very divisive.