Thread time. 
1. Hypothesis: racism is not primarily about claiming that one group is inferior to another. Racism is mostly about a society's expectations for people's behavior when they are in a group known to be out of power.

2. Like many monkeys, humans are very attuned to which groups are in and out of power. Groups in power are allowed to make displays of dominance. Groups out of power are expected to act submissive.

3. Many people--maybe most people--are reflexively sensitive to violations of this system. They feel a real discomfort when people defy this basic social order.

4. The crime of a Christian Cooper or George Floyd is failing to act sufficiently submissive. Individuals who expect a relationship of dominance feel violated when someone from the wrong group fails to show them proper deference.

5. A white person is not only insulated against the threat of force both those men faced. A white person, taking the same actions, would never cause the same offense in the first place.

6. The president can call armed white protesters in Michigan "good people" because he expects displays of dominance from them. He can then turn around and threaten black protesters with lethal force because they're supposed to act submissive.  They're off script.

7. Societies hate people who go off script. Acting against an "uppity" or "out-of-line" individual feels natural to the person maintaining that boundary.

8. Guys, I am sick to my stomach because I know that the collective outrage over this month's displays of racism will fade and people will go back to their lives and the script won't change.

9. There's been a lot of discussion about how black and brown people might be perceived on the street or in public places while doing mundane things. But have you thought about how this kind of script plays out at work?

10. I am a mixed-race, ethnically ambiguous individual and I've had people complain to my supervisors in multiple jobs because I got up during a meeting to sketch out ideas on a whiteboard and they thought that was offensively presumptuous of me.

11. I was recently a supervisor for a super competent employee from a minority background. There was a pattern of certain leaders seeing her as brash and aggressive.

12. Once her group was asked to present some thinking. She paused, looked around, asked if someone else wanted to share, and led out when no one else did. One figure in leadership was still upset afterward that  she had spoken.

13. I would be extremely surprised if anyone involved in these or countless other work situations thought they were being racist. I'm sure they would assert their respect for all people.

14. But the scripts are strong and societies can't stand a person who goes off script.

15. People don't like what they see, of course, when it gets caught on tape. When a woman calls the police and acts threatened because a black man questioned her. When a police officer spends eight minutes kneeling on the neck of a man accused of check fraud.

16. But even before the collective outrage fades, people will go right back to enforcing the script.

17. So I return to my hypothesis: racism is not primarily about hating people from a different background. It's about the different expectations we have for the behavior of people from groups known to be out of power.

18. I keep seeing people say stuff like this should never happen. But it does. And because we are part-monkey, it probably always will. In one form or another.

19. So for me, the question is: what are we going to do about it whenever it comes up?

20. How can we all, as a society, get better at recognizing these dynamics and giving people a little more room to live?