>You really don't have to feel like you are stepping on eggshells, even in your explanation here.

Thanks, that's reassuring.

>I would call that awkwardness you described as a microaggression because it is an experience that shouldn't be a part of my daily experience, and it shouldn't be something you have to worry about, but in this case it would come from you towards me.

I agree that it isn't fair to you, and that causes me to develop meta-OCD about it, lol. I feel kinda bad even writing these comments, because I don't wanna be in a position where I'm unfairly making it into your problem to an even greater degree.

You can call it a microaggression if you like, but I think that will make the problem worse on my end, because I'll obsess over it even more. I read a self-help book by a psychologist on this OCD stuff, and one of the things it mentioned is that it is helpful for other people to make light of your condition, even cracking jokes about it. If they act really concerned, that ends up validating the compulsive behavior, according to the author.

My secret wish would be to make a deal with the black people I meet that they will agree to privately bring it up with me if they feel I'm actually being racist so we can have a (hopefully two-way) discussion about that, and then knowing that I trust them to do that, that might help me relax and not worry as much. I think a big part of the problem is the fear that I'm being racist without knowing it. Of course, privately confronting people about their racism may not always be the optimal strategy. But it could be an interesting experiment to offer to make that deal, if you sense the other person would want it.

The reason I think it's better for the discussion to be two-way is because like a lot of engineers, I also have something of a compulsive need for the world to make sense and be a logical place. So if you were to tell me that I said X racist thing, but I don't initially see how it was racist, I feel a need to understand the root of our disagreement the same way I try to understand why there's a bug in a program. If I don't feel like I can do that, then that comes back to the original thing of me not feeling like I can be my authentic self. We don't necessarily need to see eye-to-eye on everything, but in an ideal world I'd like to get to the point where whatever disagreements remain are ones where you find my authentic opinion on the subject to be tolerable.

>These kinds of things affect the group decision on whether a candidate passed the "culture fit"

For what it's worth, back when my company was hiring a lot, I was very conscious of this kinda thing. I'm almost certain I ended up giving women and underrepresented minorities higher culture fit ratings overall. Partially because I wanted to account for any biases on my end, but it also gives me warm fuzzy feelings to have an (almost always positive) recruiting interaction with someone when there is so much BS on the internet saying that it should be hard for us to get along due to demographic characteristics. As cheesy as it may sound, at the end of the day we are all human beings, and if we can just see that in each other, I think it goes a long way. And once I've gotten past this kinda stuff with someone, it frequently forms the basis for a great friendship, in my experience.

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This is more of a side note, but as I was writing the above it occurred to me that in some cases there might be a useful analogy to be made between racism and mental illness. The traditional view of mental illness has been that if you suffered from some kind of mental illness, that represented a moral defect, and it was your responsibility to suck it up and do better. But recently there has been a more progressive view of mental illness that says we should treat mental illness as a disease just like any other disease, making use of evidence-based treatments, and only frame it as a moral defect if this framing has been shown to be an effective evidence-based treatment. (I don't know if moralizing actually ever ends up being an effective treatment--the one thing that comes to mind is Alcoholics Anonymous for addiction, but I don't know how evidence-based it is.) In any case, it might be useful / productive to separate out the question of whether racism is morally acceptable from the question of whether framing it as a moral defect will be a productive treatment for a particular person or situation. This is probably very person / situation-dependent, but as I tried to communicate above, at least for me, I suspect this kinda "moral defect" framing, especially when applied forcefully, can sometimes make the problem worse.