Why would the person on the victim end of this feel humiliated? I suspect,at least in part the body language offense and humiliation contributes to the awkwardness. Now, if they insist on treating the guy with less melanin as the boss even after being corrected...yeah, who wouldn't be pissed.
In this type of situation, the empathetic resolution would be to apologize for causing the victim's embarrassment, which most likely exceeds your own.
Why wouldn't they? Being unfavorably stereotyped is almost universally frustrating and humiliating, regardless of any systemic concerns about racism and the like.
Wrt. the case mentioned by parent, it seems clear to me that the person involved should definitely apologize for their social faux pas and mistaken assumptions-- and that seeing them refuse to address the issue for fear of being regarded as racist or whatever would only result in even more frustration.
It's humiliating for the "victim" because this probably happens on a daily basis. Tell me that wouldn't kneecap your confidence to constantly have to correct people and massage their egos and reassure them you're not offended just so they give you money. It's forcing the victim to perform the emotional labor of remediating the offense. It's wrong and we let people off the hook far too easily for it.
Those "associative generalizations" are racism, sexism and homophobia in a nutshell. You (not you in particular, but yeah, kind of) have certain associations bound to race. Acknowledge it, confront those feelings, and deal with them. It's your problem, not theirs; yet we constantly give people a pass on their own internalized racism because the people who are systemically oppressed by said racism aren't really in a position to call them out.
I'm not saying you should be fired from your job or anything; just that you should acknowledge that your generalizations do harm to people. Educate yourself on the things they go through to build empathy. Don't make them do the work you should be doing yourself. And don't assume that because they're exhausted from dealing with this daily and so don't act offended that they're not harmed by it.
The anti-racism movement is about white people not giving other white people a pass for casual racism. We have forced marginalized people of color to do the work on this front for too long, when it's a problem within the white community. Expect to be called out aggressively on this stuff from here on out until you educate yourself on why it's harmful.
If you expect some kind of people to be in charge rather than others, it is a symptom of widespread racism/sexism in your environment. You doing the "mistake" does not mean you necessarily, actively, try to cause harm. But you still do, and this wouldn't happen if not for racism.
> Why would the person on the victim end of this feel humiliated?
For the person doing the mistake, it was one particular case of embarassment, for the victim it was Tuesday. The constant rate of mistakes make it humiliating.
It's not easy to say "sorry i was racist to you" and then briefly go on to talk about how you think their offer is bad and proposr something less (is it your racism again? ). It's a two way street is what I am saying, most people would see an apology as a weakness they can exploit.
> Why wouldn't they? Being unfavorably stereotyped is almost universally frustrating and humiliating,
I'd say because feeling humiliated is a completely wrong feeling but maybe something is lost in translation?
Here is my attempt, note that I'm not a native English speaker and I also haven't been in the US for long enough to understand all American customs but I read a lot of English and write a lot English:
- if someone does a mistake in front of others the perpetrator will normally feel embarrassed
- if this happens often enough the victim will feel annoyed and frustrated
- humiliated on the other hand is when someone tells others about something dumb you did.
is this correct?
The fact that she was standing on the customer side of the counter would probably be a bigger factor than her gender.
If you had done that while she was on the other side of the counter or if she was wearing some kind of obvious uniform you'd have a point. However, if she was on your side of the counter and had no obvious signs of working there, there would be no reason to think she was anything but a customer.
The alternative would be to address all the customers as if they worked there, and that's just not practical.
The whole point of OP's article is to say nope, this is quite wrong. There's still a lot of unwarranted shame and, yes, humiliation attached to even something as ordinary as being CEO of a business-- if you happen to be Black. It's not an easy problem to solve, and most naïve, even well-intentioned suggestions don't necessarily help.
It's great that in your mind you also realized you had an implicit bias ("you just don't see women in those roles a lot"), but it doesn't seem like your implicit bias colored your interaction.