For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

I thought this was a great article. One of the most interesting things to me was how the embarrassment/defensiveness of the white people involved was one of the biggest blocks to the black CEOs in their advancement, e.g. the VCs who "just wanted to get the hell out of there" after mistaking a white subordinate for the CEO.

I've recently been reading/watching some videos and writings by Robin Diangelo on systemic racism - here's a great starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7mzj0cVL0Q. She also wrote the book "White Fragility".

Thinking about that, I'm just wondering how different it would be if one of those people who mistook the employee for the CEO instead turned to the CEO and said "I'm sorry, please excuse me for the instance of racism I just perpetrated against you, I promise it won't happen again." I realize how outlandish that may sound writing that out, but I'd propose that the fact that it does sound outlandish is the main problem. Everyone in the US was raised in an environment that inculcated certain racial ideas, subconsciously or not. We can't address them if we're so embarrassed by their existence as to pretend they don't exist.

That's stereotyping, not racism. People make inferences. Like, if there's two folks, one dressed in a suit, the other in baggy clothes with thick glasses, most people (including VCs) would default to the former as the MBA CEO, and the latter as geek CTO Even though it might be the exact opposite! If you make a wrong inference, just accept the correction and move on, no hurt feelings. Similar for old vs. young.

> That's stereotyping, not racism.

It can be both.

"Women drive badly" is a sexist stereotype, but not racism.

"Black people drive badly" would be both a stereotype and racism.

Well, it's still sexist. Same thing. Also, wrong.

A better example would be, "women aren't passionate about driving". That's a stereotype, likely a correct one (i.e. substantiated by statistics... I mean, I'm not certain, but that would be my prior, but I'm very open to changing it), and most importantly: not harmful. It's just a stereotype.

I'm not denying that things could be harmful (racism, sexist, ...). But not all stereotypes are. Like guessing that "Alex" is probably a guy.

Not going to get into whether "just a stereotype" is harmful generally, but your example really depends on the context. What if you're a woman applying to be a performance driver somewhere, and the response to your application is "women aren't passionate about driving"? That would be harmful.

That would be an absurd response if the woman in question was actually interested. People only use stereotypes when they DONT have specific information.

I’m over forty and and upper middle class. It’s a true stereotype that we don’t tend to be passionate skateboarders, but someone that met me in a skatepark would not draw the conclusion that I’m not interested based on my age and socioeconomics.