How in the hell is that not racism?
"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."
"You are much more smart because your skin is lighter than I expected," now that would be racism.
Or "I will be happier to work with you because you are lighter than expected."
Or "You must have gotten that job because you are lighter than expected."
When you meet a software developer, saying they're unexpectedly dark strongly implies you didn't think someone of that ethnicity was capable of being a software developer.
It doesn't need to be spelled out -- the implication is very clear, and if an employee claims to be ignorant of this, they should at least be sent on the race awareness training.
"Assume the worst" = This is precisely the kind of mind reading that leads to a paranoid, unhappy, eternally vigilant society.
I don't see the difference between that and realising someone is a different ethnicity than you expected.
Racism is (by definition) prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism. Being surprised because someone looks different than you imagined is nothing like that.
Because they're of an unusual height, I assume. You had an expectation that they were of average height.
You can look at the pictures of the person that received that comment. They don't have an unusual skin color, and the ethnicity matches their name (say, they don't have a Russian sounding name with really dark, almost black skin). It shouldn't be unexpected to see their skin color.
Another option is that the expectation didn't come from averages nor names, and it came from prejudice about how software engineers look like. So yes, it definitely can be interpreted as a racist remark.
My color of skin definitely depends on the camera I sit in front of. The best cameras are as good as a mirror, but lower quality cameras built in laptops are awful. Looking at greenish or greyish myself is a bit nauseating.
Everything is blue if you wear blue tinted glasses
I live in a city where I expect everyone to be expectedly dark, and anyone that come near to my white shade is very unexpectedly light
If I go to the pale end of the country, any darker skin would be unexpected, no matter the job title and no matter the IQ level
No unexpecting person should be liable for your projected meaning on surprising turn of events
If you’re making the comment, it’s because you’ve internalized a few stereotypes around skin color, and made an assumption based solely on those stereotypes. Stop yourself at the point where you’re making the assumption.
Probably each person has some mind-image that’s more common than others (probably guided by early childhood experiences, or mirror image of you), or even if you’re on average unbiased there’s still going to be some image you have in mind for each particular person, which is a perfectly legitimate reason to be surprised upon finally meeting that person.
Honestly the only reason this is controversial is because of “skin color” and the current political climate.
“Oh, I’m surprised, I imagine you having red hair.”
“How come you imagined me having red hair?”
“Don’t know, just because.”
Inherent in assuming a skin color is the implied association between, for example, intelligence and skin color.
"I'm surprised you're black," is not so far off from the acknowledged insult, "You're really $X for a woman."
WRT your example, anger issues are stereotypically associated with red hair, so there could be an implied "you have anger issues" that goes with that. "Oh, no reason," is also a very common deflection when being called out for poor assumptions or implied insults.
There is always a reason associations between mental traits and physical features exist, even if you're not consciously aware of it.
EDIT: And to go a different direction, if someone truely doesn't make such associations... Now that they know some people do recognize those associations, just be polite and don't make such comments about people's appearance - be it skin color, hair color, height, weight, etc.
That's because you explicitly added the "an engineer" part to make the insinuation clear.
As long as it has nothing to do with work performance or other character traits, I don't see racism here. Otherwise you'd need to ban any discussion about appearances at the work place.
It's perfectly reasonable to adjust coming anywhere close to discussing race as a strategy to avoid getting fired, but it's insane to redefine racism based on that.
We're doing that, and it results in a constantly expanding definition of racism, to where there are now "microaggressions."
Keep in mind, if you're white, you don't care: as you suggested, you just avoid talking about certain topics and carry on.
If you're a minority group, all these white people are, against their own apparent interests, agreeing that there's pervasive racism everywhere. The minority person has to live believing that all this is true.
We ought to have empathy and get this right so we don't contribute to a pervasive falsehood that makes people's lives seem worse than they really are. What's no big deal for us can be a ton of stress for others.
If the commenter was being flippant or dismissive or generally uncaring in their conversation it could be taken as racist by someone sensitive to such things.
If the comment was delivered with zero malicious intent and was merely a throwaway observation then it's not racist and only someone looking for offense would take it that way.
Like I said, without background knowledge and context it's impossible to determine if it was a racist remark or not.
Turned out that while Christine was born and raised here in Norway, she had two Thai parents.
There's not a large Thai population here, and Christine is not a name I associated with Thais, so I was quite surprised by it. Not in a positive or negative way, just plain old surprised.
Maybe that's my autism talking, idk, but I fail to see how one can find racism in that sentence.
Racism is the structural discrimination and exclusion of certain groups of people, and this is one of the ways in which it perpetuates. If every person who isn’t white is made to feel unwelcome (even if unintentionally), is that not de facto discrimination?
A lot of this stuff goes over my head, but it is there and it’s up to us to learn to recognise it when it has a detrimental effect on our friends and coworkers.
Also known as “There’s no such thing as reverse racism!”, which as a premise to fight racism (different treatment based on skin-colour) starts off by dividing people into different skin-colours, so that they can be treated differently (and the equivalent mental exercise for sexism/gender).
It would be hilarious if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s being done seriously and gaining momentum.
I used to get teased for this constantly as a teenager. Every time the weather was nice, and especially if I was returning home from a holiday in a sunny destination, I knew I'd get the same idiotic comments about my failure to get a tan. I hated it, and I resented people who said this to me. Not because I'm insecure about the colour of my skin (really, I don't give a fuck about tanning) - just that it was so boring. The same stupid, boring, tedious jokes again and again and again and again and again and again and again. Give me a break.
This doesn't make me a victim of racism, and I can't think of any other disadvantages to my skin colour except perhaps an increased suncream budget. But I do find it offensive. You're not funny, and I've heard it a million times before.
Rant over.
(Edit: to be clear, I don't find it offensive if someone simply described me as "white" or "pale" - only when they make unoriginal jokes about it.)
I had plenty of eastern european cheap labour jokes from friends, I just played along depending on their skin colour or race. No one was upset and we all laughed at our unique differences.
Any mention of skin tone is verboten!
We must not mention it no matter the context!
If I recall correctly (from the other HN discussion) the person in question had vacationed some where tropical and the comment was about how much she had/hadn’t tanned.
I believe the person making the complaint actually raised the topic originally.
Please inform me because I didn't get the memo.
I'm of Irish decent and it has had it's fair share of stigmatism throughout history yet most of us pretty pasty white.