Because I'm responding to the very top comment about assuming good intent and the people already agreeing with it. I'm not arguing that what happened in the article is verified true.

> Are you really trying to claim that you have traversed the near-infinite space of potential interactions and deemed them all 'NOT OK'? All of them?

I made no claims. I asked the question.

> What if this comment was in context of a sun-tan because you, your new coworker and other people were talking about about their sun-tans and your new coworker pointed out they tan really quickly (or not at all)? Is that too silly? What if your new coworker was the one who brought up their skin tone and you politely agreed with them? Too contrived? Don't like this creative writing exercise? How is that different from what you're doing ... except you're not only taking the absolute worst and most ugly interpretation of a half-a-sentence reference from this article, but also categorically stating that there is no context under which it would be 'OK' for two co-workers to reference skin color. Insanity.

Then you're just assuming good faith on behalf of the offending party in the article based on certain "what ifs" that you conjured, which isn't so different from my engaging in conversation with HN re: the boundaries of workplace racism based on the "what if" that the article is, in fact, true.