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.
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.
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.
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.
See how creating a hostile environment works?
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.