[lostcolony]

It might be! He -might- say it to every intern on their first day. But the problem with many statements or questions that land poorly, even ones not tied to race, gender, etc, is not the intention of the person saying them, but the experience of the person hearing them.

For instance, "are you supposed to be here?" may be a perfectly reasonable question asked purely because the asker doesn't recognize the person, and they would have asked it regardless of skin color, gender, etc. However, if you've heard things like that all your life, if your lived experience is that the majority don't expect someone of your gender or skin color to be in the exclusive areas they frequent, it can't help but hurt, and feel exclusive based on your gender, skin color, etc. You can't help but wonder "would they have asked that of me if I was a white man?", etc.

This doesn't mean the question asker meant anything by the question, but it does indicate a lack of sensitivity to the lived experience of the person here. You can compensate for it by learning about and recognizing that lived experience and reformulating the question; for instance "Hi! I don't think we've met; what do you do here?" for my example, or "Welcome aboard! I'm really excited to see what you accomplish here. My goal is to make sure this is a really positive experience for you, and my hope is that you'll be able to learn a lot while you're with us" for the original.