[doublekill]

My first European colleague was a male-to-female person. She had worked at a major company for years, got a bad performance report, and attributed it to her transition. It went to court and the company settled, instead of defending not promoting her (with or without regard of her transition). Very good programmer. She worked there for 1 year more, doing only things that the company laywers agreed to.

In America I see similar things. I think it is seductive to be swept up with identity politics, and suddenly that promotion that went to a white person, feels different, feels racist. Or you employ a neurodiverse low-social skill person who makes an edgy unfunny joke, because he is nervous. That's "racist humor on the work floor" when going to a lawyer or journalist. It is a dangerous world out there. Current climate not helping.

[muglug]

I don’t believe neurodiverse people make racist jokes as a matter of course. At least, that hasn’t been my experience.

I think journalists are also able to tell the difference between “some dude made a poor-taste joke once” and “dudes were always making poor-taste jokes targeted at one specific minority when the employee was present”.

I’ll also say that, at my reasonably woke US company, I’m not aware of any neurodiverse person getting in any trouble for making a bad-taste joke.

[doublekill]

The journalist won't get to talk to the neurodiverse person. Usually someone lacking a thick skin or easy to take offense, goes to HR to complain (anonymously if need be) about offensive, awkward, sexist, racist, far-right, ... speech. The neurodiverse person will (rightly) get a warning, an internal investigation finds no systemic harm done, and that's that, you won't even hear about it, as it juridically not smart to be transparent about such cases.

Then the offended person changes jobs, complains on Twitter about sexist humor driving her out of her previous job, a journalist searches for leads on their next story, and suddenly you are in the news with "multiple people complained about sexist and racist humor on the work floor, but nothing was done about it, and no complaint or investigation resulted in any action. We asked the company for a response and they replied that these internal investigations turned up nothing and that they don't accept discrimination of any kind".

Nearly every company has incidents of sex between co-workers, or people taking illegal drugs on a company get together. Depending on who you get to talk to that's "it seemed like every other week I saw a used condom in the stair ways" or "management regurarily used cocaine during company parties". You won't talk to anyone relativating it, and company PR is shy to even admit that stuff.