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Comment by DrNosferatu | Hacker News Reader

"Inside the newsroom some of them would say hello or nod or even speak to me but if they saw me outside the building they would pretend they didn't know me".

When you experience this as an immigrant (so the ignoring party knows you have a different nationality) is it generally racism?

- What do you think?

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I’ve been living in the US for 21 years and whenever I experience this I assume it is racism and/or prejudice. I cannot confront them so I have no way of knowing their exact reasons for doing this. Maybe I’m just socially awkward and I don’t quite know how to play native in this country.

It didn’t bother me much until the last couple of years. I now have a young daughter who’s friends with a lot of the other kids in the neighborhood. I receive the same treatment from some of these other parents outside of the playground or outside of the school line and I can’t help but think they’re going to perpetuate this cycle in the future.

Since it’s generally harder to recognise people of other ethnicities, maybe they either mistakingly think it’s not you (without other context to help them), or think it might be but don’t want to take the risk of offending a stranger.

Even within the same ethnicity, there are myriad reasons why someone might not be confident that they recognize someone else, or that if they do, an unprompted greeting would be welcome.

I have some kind of "face blindness". I have failed to recognize members of my own family who showed up at my house when I wasn't expecting them, and once didn't recognize my girlfriend when she saw me on the street and grabbed my arm. She called my cell phone in tears asking why I had pushed her away.

I always have to greet people with the best halfway "hello again"/"nice to meet you" slurring my words I can and watch carefully to see if they recognize me, then in a panic try to figure out who they are. It is always a terrifying experience, but on many occasions when it has been someone of a different race they've made a comment indicating they assumed it was because of their race.

This assumes a whole lot. How do you know for certain that the person is treating you differently from others because of your background? Depending on the person and the prevailing culture it may be perfectly normal to more or less ignore someone outside the office. If you're constantly on the lookout for some nefarious activity you may start to interpret it where it doesn't actually exist.

I've definitely done the same and have had the same done to me even with people who I am rather friendly with in the office (across all identity characteristics). I'm more introverted than most and generally shy away from a lot of social interactions unless I have to or would obviously come across as impolite. The prevailing culture in my location is to generally leave people alone outside the office as engaging in smalltalk can come across as being annoying when they probably just want to get where they're going, indulge in their phone, or are mentally preoccupied with what they should do for dinner that evening.

> Depending on the person and the prevailing culture it may be perfectly normal to more or less ignore someone outside the office

Precisely this. When about town in public, I ignore everybody except my closest friends or family, or people I have arranged ahead of time to meet up with. For me, this is an application of the Golden Rule. I do not like it when work acquaintances approach me in public and start trying to idly chat me. I don't like it when that's done to me, so I don't do it to others.

Hearing that some people will interpret this as racism or similar is disappointing and disconcerting, but I'm not going to change my behavior. If somebody is making those assumptions, that is disappointing but their assumptions are their responsibility, not mine. And frankly, treating others as I wish to be treated takes precedence over treating others as they wish to be treated.

Of course that's racism, just like what Ms. Gilliam experienced was racism.

Sounds like fear to me.

Not to excuse racism in any way, shape or form. But I think that fear and racism are quite tightly connected.

The fear that you and your tribe’s quality of life will go down if resources, especially hours of low paid labor, were more equally distributed?

Well it's the very definition of xenophobia, for racist reasons.

I think what you're describing as xenophobia is fear of the other. What I see here is the fear of someone who would actually like to do the right thing, but has fear of what their own kind will do to them.

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