zlacker

Racism needs not be voluntary to be racism. You just learn to expect some things to be more probable than others, but are those heuristics really based on actual facts or just biases?

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.

>>junke+(OP)
I think you meant to say "doesn't need to be voluntary". "Needs not to be" has exactly the opposite meaning, though it's an uncommon way to put it in English.

>>neonat+Yb
I am not a native English speaker and I appreciate being corrected about grammar and usage. I thought it was the same meaning as "doesn't need to", and looking around forums etc. I cannot find confirmation of what you describe. Do you have an example where the expression has the opposite meaning? Thanks.

>>junke+z31
You're actually correct in how you used it, as a native English speaker, although I think "need not be" is the preferred/correct form. I think this expression is a little less common in the US compared to the UK.

>>vinay4+E71
"Needs not to be" and "need not be" have sharply different meanings. "Racism need not be voluntary to be racism" would have been a perfectly clear and eloquent way to make the GP's point. But that extra "s" in "needs" changes the meaning entirely, at least in American English. Are you sure that this is not also the case in the UK? I'd be very surprised.

>>neonat+rY5
I agree that those are different, but I subconsciously read it as "need not be" and later assumed it was a mistype of that, not "needs not to be," as it's closer to the former than the latter.