"Just be normal. Is that really so difficult to be?"

No, she doesn't like extroverts, and saying that is socially unacceptable, so she's going all "black vs white" instead.

Look at the comments along the lines of

"everybody did their own thing, did their job, and went home." (I love that kind of working environment, its unfortunately rare to have a professional working environment)

"I remember asking if we could do other outings that didn’t include beer and getting voted down." (despite not being a black woman, I feel exactly the same way as she does WRT this topic, so I suspect her and I would get along great, other than the whole we're both apparently introverts so getting along great would mean sitting silently, very happily, with each other)

There is an anecdotal aspect to her argument. As a white dude I've met and worked with a lot of really weird white dudes over the decades, and thats apparently ok. She met ONE weird white dude, ONE!, and that's a big problem solely because she's a black woman. I'm not impressed. I'm not saying weirdos are good or correct or shouldn't be punished, but I am saying that trying to portray weirdos as as "a black women problem" is extremely inaccurate. They are a PITA for us all, or there exist PITA weirdos that affect every ethnic or social group. And to be honest, management and HR are utterly ineffective at weeding out weirdos regardless if the people offended are white dudes or black women, which is fairness, in a way.

I'd argue that dealing with weirdos is an adult social skill. So a long time ago I sat next to a guy with a severe temper problem who would scream at me occasionally, usually just nonsense although sometimes I admit I'd provoke him a bit. Well, it was not exactly paradise, but I'm a big boy so its "OK". It did freak out people who weren't as tough as I was, which I found amusing (You're the one who's freaked out while I'm the one sitting next to him?) The ideal social interaction system might be all candy and balloons and girl scout songs all the time but adults can and should handle something a bit worse, a bit more realistic. Toughen up, basically. She is apparently under the mistaken impression that no weirdos ever bug white dudes magically because we're the oppressor, and that is quite inaccurate.

Honestly I'm not even sure where to start with this. If this is truly your attitude you are apart of the problem. Everyone in the world isn't as "tough" as you are. You may enjoy working in that type of environment but that doesn't mean other people should. Yes there is absolutely a part of being adult that means dealing with uncomfortable people or situations but that should be far from the norm. And encouraging people to just toughen up is the exact wrong response to these situations.

Also the author doesn't describe one "weird" guy as you suggest. She describes an individual who was far and beyond offensive. Whatever his reasons that's not appropriate in every day life much less in the workplace.

Being white gives you the ability to brush this off as not your problem, or not that unusual but for someone like the author who is doubly on the outskirts the fact that a situation like that isn't addressed promptly and decisively sends the message that she isn't a valued part of the team. If you value that guys right to be overtly offensive and racist more than her right to be offended by it you are creating a culture that implicitly doesn't value a certain segment. In this case both blacks and women

> "Also the author doesn't describe one "weird" guy as you suggest. She describes an individual "

Just as the person you replied to said... it's one person who is a FAR outlier example. So you agree she described one person.

> "Being white gives you the ability to brush this off as not your problem"

That's just reversing racism. No skin color of any kind is an automatic anything. There are trends but being "white" is not a panacea for all life situations.

> "If you value that guys right to be overtly offensive and racist"

I'll just quote the original comment.. " I'm not saying weirdos are good or correct or shouldn't be punished, but I am saying that trying to portray weirdos as as "a black women problem" is extremely inaccurate."

The majority of people are normal, by definition. Ask a statistician.

>All people ever want is to work around normal people.

That's not the impression I got from the post. She clearly feels that the established "normal" (setting aside the obvious asshole outliers) isn't making her feel welcome. Just being the only black woman is apparently enough to do that, because of her fear that there might be a problem, even if it hasn't materialized. The easy response is to tell her that she needs to get over it and stop inventing problems where nobody is actually out to get her, but there are enough stories like hers that there's probably more to it.