I understand that people feel threatened by accusations of racism, but we should subject those feelings to the same scrutiny that fear of vaccines, fear of blood transfusions, fears of child kidnapping, fear of having our child trafficked for sex, and various fears of violence are subjected to. If we look at data, we find that many of our fears are not calibrated to probability of occurrence or even to the expected value of the outcome -- they're instead calibrated to media coverage.

Two guys and a gal were fired after Donglegate. People's lives are being turned upside-down in many ways by social media, whether its discussion of justice issues or sex tapes or your dog or your toast going viral. Discriminatory behavior has long been documented in employment, housing sales and rentals, financial services, etc -- just today I was reading about the riots in Cicero in 1951, when a mob of thousands attacked an apartment building in Cicero, IL into which a black couple attempted to move -- and now some of this behavior is being caught on video, unsurprisingly.

Sure, you can be antagonistic, but as doctors have discovered with malpractice, it's actually more productive and more optimized on a financial level to be gracious. Doctors who are honest and express sympathy and empathy, with an apology [1], when things go poorly are far less likely to be sued for malpractice (more links in linked article). Similarly, when you'd done something that appears to someone else to be racist, why not simply apologize (even something like, "Sorry, that was not my intention!") and then try to do better, even ask how you can do better?

If you are committed to an ideology of white supremacy, then of course this doesn't make sense as a next move. But if you're a normal person who just does things that in retrospect do come across as thoughtless or uninformed, like asking your Asian-American colleague where they're really really from and complimenting them on their English, or telling your Black colleague that you're surprised at how articulate they are, or giving a nine-year-old female chess genius a doll when she just wants a chess set... why not just apologize and do better next time?

The world is made of imperfect people who are all gonna die anyway. Most likely no one will care about your reputation in 100 years, even your great-grandkids (I knew my great-grandparents and I only knew a bit about them). So use this time to actually do your part to make the world better -- why not? It will most likely make you feel better, feel you have more integrity, and you'll be happier.

[1] https://www.natlawreview.com/article/you-had-me-i-m-sorry-im...