Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

I had an experience at work where a coworker (who is black) shared his experience of being told to "stay in his lane" early on in his career. The insinuation was of course racism, he didn't mention it but it was obvious. Then I and someone else (who are white) shared our exact same experiences.

He told me he felt cut off, etc, even though we were sharing the same experience. If we had something similar happen, how can he definitively attribute that experience to racism? Even if it was, that was not the point of the conversation. We were all sharing our experiences on that topic and no one mentioned race. Why do we need to bend ourselves backwards to make sure all minorities feel comfortable all the time?

The point here is you can't talk to minority groups about anything these days, if you are white.

As a non-minority person, I often see people just being assholes. For example, some dominating dude who talks over everyone, who ignores others input, who takes credit for everything, etc. As a white male, when I encounter that behavior, I think to myself, wow, that guy is a fucking asshole. However, and I have experienced this, people who are in a minority often take it personally, that they're an asshole to them, because they're in a minority group. It can be very frustrating to watch that (especially if my group -- white male -- then gets blamed for the behavior, as if its my fault this other dude is an asshole) and I can't really say anything either or it comes across like I'm defending the asshole.

Why would you say something to defend the asshole? In your example, you interpreted the same - the guy was an asshole. Why give them a pass?

In most cases I hear of people that claim they’re afraid of giving “candid feedback” to a minority, it’s almost always the case that the person is an asshole when giving feedback IN GENERAL as well. Maybe evaluating your general behavior first, before going all scared of this or that minority group, would be much more productive? The net result is almost always positive.

Edit: I interpreted this as you having been witnessed situations where you felt someone was an asshole, and someone else did too but ascribed it to sexist or targeted. Apologies for the non-fluency.