He told me he felt cut off, etc, even though we were sharing the same experience. If we had something similar happen, how can he definitively attribute that experience to racism? Even if it was, that was not the point of the conversation. We were all sharing our experiences on that topic and no one mentioned race. Why do we need to bend ourselves backwards to make sure all minorities feel comfortable all the time?
The point here is you can't talk to minority groups about anything these days, if you are white.
So I did this as usual and offered a hint to the last person (who was a woman) to not see the trick this time. It surprised me when she looked visibly upset and asked me why I was explaining it to her. I'm guessing this is because of her own insecurities that she was worried that I thought she was too dumb to solve it on her own otherwise. Up until this point her gender was irrelevant to me. I only explain stuff because the value of discussing interview problems is to get practice solving and explaining stuff to each other. But now I have to question whether I was "mansplaining" or not.
This minor event bothered me so much I never talked to her about programming puzzles ever again.
Yes, absolutely. Men do that all the time.