[rustthrow]

I really don't agree, reading the original poster's experience, that we should walk away thinking that it was because they're black. Nor should we by default assume that's the case. Multiple follow-ups by people in the Rust community have said that the politics and behavior here are a wider issue with leadership.

If the takeaway or speculation is that what went wrong here was only an issue because the speaker is black, it cheapens their experience. It tells other minorities that when they flag a problem, the root cause is their race/gender/orientation; that the solution is then a code of conduct refresh, maybe diversity training, "educating themselves", etc. But that is not, fundamentally, as far as we can see, what is wrong here. We are not respecting the deep issues that the OP actually did identify by projecting other speculative possibilities.

What happened here is a problem no matter who the speaker was. Let's address that. If other evidence comes to light on the backing motivations, we can address those to, but it's not helpful to voluntarily pull other bad behavior that there is no reason to suspect here. No one can disprove a negative, but it's on all of us to not fall for that bait.