>Honest question, is this a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy? You expect to be judged by the color of your skin, so you act constantly in fear of being judged, making your time in the industry "suck" as you put it?

It may very well be self-fulfilling. But my point is that this issue doesn't exist for white people. You can live with the fear of impostor syndrome and not feeling qualified enough, etc. But your completely unchangeable physical appearance does not contribute to that. Every shortcoming that could possibly exclude you from any job is within your control to fix and work on, whereas we will always be left with this single unpredictable variable no matter what.

So sorry to have left this conversation - my honest comment was flagged for some reason (too flip?)

Here it is again: there are many completely unchangeable physical appearance features that can afflict anyone, not just people of color. The claim that every shortcoming is within your control to fix, is overstated.

I didn't mean to minimize the societal issue addressed; just this hyperbolic comment.

Unless you're a short white person, or god forbid a white woman. White women would love to have even the advantages of a black man (respected or feared instead of marginalized, become president etc)

Please don't take HN threads into flamewar hell.

Especially not when the topic is inflammatory and the discussion has managed to remain civil so far. Then it's vandalism, if not arson.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ummmmmm what?

I think you are missing the forest for the trees

I think JoeAltmaier is right on point. There are way more disadvantageous traits than skin color, and some of them are just as bad. E.g. having low IQ. It's just as unfixable as the skin color is and probably way worse. How about being much older than everyone else? That's quite a bad thing in a workplace, even if you're just as smart and capable. But even traits such as having AIDS, having a scar through one's face or even just having really bad teeth can be unfixable for many people. Then it's correct to ask the question: why would society as a whole place the skin color at the center of its attention?

In my opinion, humans are inherently xenophobic and suspicious of anything that is unfamiliar or an outlier. Evolution shaped us this way. So you cannot eradicate all the pain, fear and suffering caused by xenophobia, not by a long shot. People with negative traits (in other people's eyes) need to learn to live with them, and they do it all the time. I am not by any means arguing for racism, of course. We still need to teach that racism is bad, but at the same time we should ask ourselves: are we blowing this thing out of proportions? If we as a society are already near the point of maximum tolerance, then insisting on further corrective measures (such as so called "affirmative action", i.e. discrimination to groups seen as the oppressors) may make things worse for everyone by raising resentment and heating up the hate as opposed to reducing it.

You might consider that your question is similarly self-fulfilling. Your basic theory here is you know a black man's experience better than he does. How many black people will be willing to honestly share with you what happens to them when this is a depressingly common reaction? Which of course leads you to believe that this isn't a pervasive problem in the US.

If you're interested in moving beyond that, I'd suggest starting with the recent books from DiAngelo [1] and Oluo [2]. Or for a more personal take, the recent memoir from Julie Lythcott-Haims is good at conveying how pervasive this stuff is, and how much pain that causes.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07638ZFN1 [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073P53DVL [3] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MR92UQN