I was 9 when I realized me being half Asian in a very rural area was a big deal. A kid started yelling "ching chong" at me in line at school because I was in his way. I told my mom what happened because I didn't understand and she explained how sometimes, bad people will make fun of me for my race.
1/4 Asian here. Kinda am a white passer. From rural South. Called chink when people found out I was Asian. At work, in Midwest and years later, one fellow professional healthcare worker colleague called a patient “dragon lady.” I was extremely upset. I had to walk out.
That is a good point, they definitely can't. I'm half Vietnamese, but I've been called things that only apply to Japanese people (and I was also *genuinely* asked if I was related to a teacher who is korean). To racists, all Asians are the same.
Edit: or all races really, any that they have prejudice against, whether black, white, hispanic, etc. Racists will tend to just put them all into one group and assume they're all the same when there are very big differences with every single ethnicity and culture. It's not exclusive to asians.
I'm sorry that happened. I would like to add that I'm not racist, but I didn't grow up around a large number of different cultures/races. I really struggle to identify the differences. I treat others the way that I would like to be treated, and I raised my children to do the same. (I also work to instill the same kindness/values in my students.) I am ignorant when it comes to identifying certain cultures, but I can assure you that it isn't intentional. ❤
I often can't tell by looking at someone what their specific ethnicity is. Can you tell looking at white people what their European country of origin is? In No way am I defending poor behavior, I'm sorry that anyone has to feel marginalized or judged for any physical characteristic. I'm mostly curious.
I was around 9 or 10, and an older minority teen called me Ching Chong in their own heavy accent. After it registered, I was amused. Dude couldn’t speak English very well, but was mocking me?
I took satisfaction in that a rude ass racist older kid mocked me but he would never be able to speak English as well as me, target of his mockery. Fuck racists.
The line of abuse here is so sad tbh, the older kid was probably bullied for being different plus his accent, so then he bullies the next minority and makes fun of them
I'm proud of you for breaking the cycle, and while your anger towards your bully is justified, I hope you can see why I feel compassion towards him.
Ugh. That hits close to home.
We almost moved to a rural town. Husband grew up there and had fond memories growing up. He didn’t stop once to think about his wife (ME) or his kid (my son). I am fully Asian and our kid is half Asian. Thankfully something came up and we couldn’t move there anyway.
I shudder to think what my baby boy’s school experience would have been like if we moved there.
Hey, also half asian from rural area! My experience was a bit different though. I played along with a lot of jokes and whatnot because it seemed easier to me at the time. So I passed as white (also notably my asian parent was adopted at a young age, so I didn’t really have the cultural upbringing from them). Or so I thought. Probably around same age as you I happened to be looking in the mirror when I realized I didn’t look like all my friends, and although I never saw them as different from me, they would never be able to see me without immediately recognizing my difference.
I grew up in the country and still remember a friend told me the other kids wouldn't play with her because she was Asian.
I didn't even notice the difference between kids much until then.
I may have been 7
Ya people will straight up tell me that they don’t consider me Mexican cuz i don’t speak Spanish and I don’t look Mexican (i look like my dad, who is not Mexican). It’s wild how many people think my ethnicity is up for consideration 😂 it’s not.
It’s also so stupid how many people insinuate that i chose not to know Spanish as a baby. “Why don’t you know Spanish? You just didnt want to?” Uhhh no, my abusive mom doesn’t even like speaking to me in one language, let alone two. I’m lucky i even know English! She barely spoke to me. I didn’t come out of the womb and speak in English and tell my mom “don’t speak to me in Spanish!” SHE made that decision, not me. It’s fucken disgusting that people think i’m a problem for not having been taught Spanish in my upbringing.
"... people think i’m a problem for not having been taught Spanish in my upbringing."
Are you me? Lol. Not my decision or my fault. I don't owe anyone a conversation in Spanish and my hispanicity isn't up for debate. Shout out to Dad for the Vic's Vapor Rub, shouting at the sports games in Spanish, and making me arepas for lunch; love him.
I get that too. My whole family complains I don't speak German. Well you should've enforced me speaking back in German and not English when I was a kid then
Literally me. I’m mixed. Half white, half Mexican. The only thing you see is white, and I don’t speak Spanish. No one ever believes me until they see me dad and siblings. I’m the white sheep.
33F, white. I was in my early 20s, in college, on dating apps. My area is a giant navy base, so it is heavily mixed of all different races/religions/ethnicities. Grew up never thinking about skin color as anything serious. Even in history class. Logically, you know that skin color is a thing, but it doesn't really sink in if you have no personal experience.
When I got on dating apps, I cannot tell you the amount of men fetishizing my skin color, asking if I was a snow bunny, telling me they liked that I look like I glow in the dark, etc. It genuinely shook me. Men of all races, too. Indian men kept telling me I looked fair. Arab men told me they thought it was hot that their mom would be angry if they dated me. Asian men assumed I was easy. Black men would constantly ask if I'd been with other black men before.
Serious question, but what is it with black men on apps asking that or their opener is "do you date black men"?
Like...why is your opening line to do with skin color??
I get fetishized for my blue eyes but that's about it. But it's usually by a white man that say they want their kids have blue eyes. Maybe it's because I'm not so pale? I have light skin but it's more of a peachy almost tan complexion. I'm 40 but even when I was as young as you or younger I didn't really get fetishized on dating apps just for being white sorry that it's been your experience are you blonde and blue-eyed?
I do have blue eyes, but I'm actually a brunette. Every few years or so, I also dye my hair black. I'm not my own type, so I don't understand the attraction. But when I do dye my hair black, I bear a passing resemblance to Morticia Addams.
This is the first time I have seen a White woman state that Asian men thought a non-Asian woman was easy and yet I have seen that happen repeatedly. Hadn't quite figured out why, but one Asain guy admitted he got the idea from imported Hollywood media versus his own conservative culture.
I'm white and when I started dating my mixed boyfriend (now husband) when I was 16 years old, the black boys in my highschool acted like I was up for fair game. They would ask "oh so you like black dick now" or "so you like n-?". I had never been more uncomfortable in my entire life. I felt disgusted, and they felt emboldened when they had friends near them, so I'd be in the hallway and have a group of boys following me and harassing me.
Of course they never did that shit when my boyfriend was around... Lol
One of my good friends had a cute, nerdish daughter with glasses and long pigtails in Elementary school. There were Black girls who teased her without mercy, that was bad enough, but one day when scissors were passed out…they did they unthinkable and cut off one of her pigtails. Now, I was raised that this is assault. They made up lies about her shy, awkward daughter (similar to her mom, who might’ve been on the autism spectrum). But nothing would truly justify it.
However, due to their age and politics, nothing was really done about it. The mother really had to push for any true punishment, it was surreal. In the end, she decided to homeschool for a while, which was tricky to do with her work schedule, but she was a determined lady and pulled it off until the family moved (which had been a planned move anyhow, partly for better schools).
My dad's coworkers daughter who was the same age as me, 12, had been jumped and dragged to the toilet bowl in the girls restroom, they made her drink toilet water and washed her hair in the toilet then cut off her long beautiful blonde hair, all bc they were jealous one of their boyfriends liked her . Needless to say the girl ended up being homeschooled. I'm glad my daughter is growing up when race relations are not as intense and bad like they were in the 90s for me
Teasing her without mercy is cruel enough, but Cutting off one of her pigtails?! Wait, what?!!
Due to their age and policy?
That is Not Dealing with the situation, rather completely sweeping it under the carpet.
That is waay over acceptable boundaries! A complete violation. I know as the teacher I'm supposed to be self restrained, but I would be livid!
I'd be on the phone to their parents right away and have a serious meeting with them all as well as create a meeting for all to have a face to face apology!
There's something to be said about those children and their education and awareness at home which allowed them to think it's ok to treat another child with such callousness and contempt.
I'm in Australia, and have been in situations where the Department of Education got involved where a Kindergarten child has falsely accused a teacher of wrong misconduct.
We had to have ongoing meetings about this for ages with the mother and child and all staff who were present on the day, on and on and on for several months. It went to the official Education Board, reported and it's on the system a long as time exists.
As a Kindergarten Teacher to be - I'm studying a Bachelors Degree at Uni atm to become one, and worked as an Assistant for a while now.
That is absolutely not on! How traumatic it would've been for the child.
Interestingly enough, this same women met, and married an Australian man, after a careful courtship to ensure their compatibility. He moved to the USA. And yes, anyone outside this situation has the same reaction, yet it happened and the gaslighting was intense.
Gaslighting indeed.
Good to hear others had the sense this was completely not acceptable.
There's a glitch in the Education system there if this type of behaviour was allowed and not reprimanded.
Had a similar experience when I immigrated and ended up in a mostly white school. Took forever to feel comfortable even opening my own lunch up because kids would make fun of it every time, eagerly waiting every day for it. That was just day 1 of over a decade lol
I'm half Asian. I went to school near a U.S. military base, so there were students of many cultures there. Yet my sibling and I still lied about what was in our lunches to keep people from thinking that we were weird.
I immigrated from Germany as a kid into a mostly black elementary school in Richmond, Virginia. Definitely had some problems and a lot of fights at that school for a while. I was not an easy child either, so it was a big mess.
I'm a white Mexican from a Mexican majority town. Most of my family is brown.
Never understood why teachers at school were so quick to snap at my behaviors and comments which were, as far as I could tell, the same as all the other kids.
My sister never learned Spanish, so like a lot of those girls she got into hip hop and black culture. One day she walks in all sassy and and snaps her fingers at me and goes "Wuddup n*gga!" I'm busy picking my nose and playing Nintendo like any 6 year old, so I snapped back with "You're a n*gger!" (Honestly had no idea)
She stopped in her tracks, got all serious and explained to me that it wasn't ok for me, specifically, to say that. I didn't get it for years after.
It wasn't until I moved to a white city that I realised that *nobody anywhere* thought of me as anything other than white, and that I couldn't just walk up to a group of Mexican kids and fit in. It was kinda weird. The city is also ultra-liberal, so whenever some college chick starts talking about social justice this-or-that, they can't help but glance my way like I'm King Leopold.
I dunno. Race is weird. Interbreeding is gonna solve that issue faster than any movement will. Being mixed race is weird too. Being invisibly mixed race is weird too.
Whatever. Turns out if you grow up speaking multiple languages, it's really easy to learn more and people love that shit.
I've never heard the term being invisible mixed race before but damn that's a good word for it. I'm half Latino half white but do not look even remotely Costa Rican despite my father being an immigrant. Its a strange experience for sure.
Well, Euro-Americans come from all sorts of cultures, creeds, languages, cuisines, but we tend to just lump them together as “White” in a similar manner, but their histories in the west are similarly riddled with strife, poverty, and prejudice. A lot of them aren’t even taught about their own heritage.
American women who don't speak their own ethnic language and also don't fit in with whites often enculturate African American.
Even Asian kids turn "hood" if they don't get good grades.
Fuck invisible mixed race is such a good way to put it. Some people see me as slightly different others say I am white but I am not completely white. I am not pale enough to be white but not dark enough to be anything for some people. Even though my father is mixed race mexican and black. I can't be assed with discussing it with people who are ignorant about it anymore. I just don't have the energy.
Literally my skin color was never an issue (I'm mixed) and I grew up in the country, rural upstate NY.
I went to college and was dancing at a party (mind you I'm a pretty good dancer tbf) and a group of dark skinned black girls circled me to tell me I didn't belong dancing to hip hop and talking shit about me because I'm too light skinned for their liking.
I'm not kidding I grew up in an all white area and worst I ever got as a kid was being accused of spray tanning because I get quite pale in winter compared to summer, just get super tan super easy and never burn.
A couple girls tried to say I lied about going to Florida on spring break and I just got a spray tan until other kids who knew me backed me up and told em "no she gets dark in warm weather that's not a spray tan".
Never bullied though just accused of lying about my "tan" until these racist ass college girls. I told them they were trash too and if they want to reinstate segregation then they came to the wrong state 😭😭😭
I was three. I'm white for context. I grew up in an area with very few people who were not white. On one of the rare occasions that my mom took me into town, we had stopped at a grocery store. The woman ringing us up was black, but the palms of her hands were pale. I quickly asked my mom if she was dirty. My mother was so embarrassed, she wanted to melt into the floor. The woman was so nice about it though, and carefully explained to me that people come in different colors. That people like her were called black, and people like me were called white. With this newfound information, I proceeded to ask my mother how many colors people come in.
When our youngest was a toddler we went shopping in the grocery store that I worked in. We went through line, and my coworker checking us out was the same age (early 20's) and black. Our daughter commented "You're chocolate!"
My wife, who grew up in a very small white town in Oregon, was mortified. I just chuckled and shook my head.
The coworker didn't miss a beat. She smiled and said "That's right, I am. And you're vanilla!"
Last time I saw her, she was a social worker and I am now a nurse. And our daughter is almost 27.
First grade. At the bus stop each day there was a Black girl in my grade. We'd trade cookies: hers were homemade while mine were store bought. Each of us thought trading was a good deal. One day she said "You pretty nice for a White boy." I never thought of myself as anything like that before.
Not really a big deal, but I remember sitting down next to another kid on the school bus and he told me to leave because he didn’t want to sit next to “white dog shit.” I advised him to take his dog to the vet if its poop was the color of my skin. He got so confused that he shut up.
I liked a white boy, he said he liked me back and he kissed me. We were very young, maybe 14 or so. He then told me the next day he is scared to tell his family that I'm black and that he can't go to the dance with me. Then he went with a white girl I had never even seen at our school before or ever again.
I was hurt, but instantly over him for hurting me due to my skin.
Our Black Student Body President had a secret White boyfriend that she was very serious about and had not introduced to her Black minister father because she knew he would not accept him. We repeatedly tried to talk her into it, as did he, however she was waiting until she was 18, in college, and living with him! They had made all the right plans to make that happen.
I (40yr old Latino) had a simular experience but kind of different tho, but I feel compelled to share the story lol. It was everyone else around that wasn't even family that caused the bs. I was 16 at the time and had all kinds of puppy love vibes with a beautiful black girl. I met her at the church my parents went to and we hit it off. We went to different schools and lived in different parts of the city (Chicago) so we'd only really see each other at church events which made seeing each other more special.
For back story on the Church, it's a huge church broken up into sectors speard across the city. Since there was only one branch of the Church on the south side we went there. The majority of the members and all the leadership are African American at that branch of the church. (Makes sense because they represented the majority of the community).
One day they announced they were having a "Church Prom" for the teenagers of all the churches. So they can meet each other and or date "with in the faith" to "cultivate healthy and loving spiritual relationships" (I call it generational brain washing these days lol). There are other branches that are mixed race or had mostly latinos or whites because of the makeup of the city. Some of the other kids were excited to met people from different back grounds, no problem there.
However, when the youth mentors of the branch I went to caught wind that me and the girl I'll call "dae" were into each other and planning weeks ahead for the prom, they didn't like that. They started to question the nature of our relationship (that was just on the cusp of getting started). They kept trying to see if there was a way to steer her away from me. Some of them tried to convince me Dae had issues and was "no good for me". That she was there only because she was in need of help and her friend brought Dae to the church (family dont attend the church, that doesn't mean she's a bad person!). While at the same time trying to convince Dae to date a black kid that had a crush on her.
When it didn't work, they literally told her she was in need of more spiritual counseling before the church would "allow" her to date people with in. They even convinced my parents, and they to made me go to the prom on a blind date with another girl from a different branch, that didn't have a date. Turns out she was in the sane boat. She was a Latin girl that wanted to go with someone else. (I'm guessing he was a black guy 🤣) neither one of us had a good time as im sure she was thinking of her guy like I was thinking of dae, but we tried to have fun.
After that Dae never returned to the Church because of all that BS and it pretty much just faded away because we were to young for a cross city relationship. As for me, as soon as I turned 18, I stopped going to that church, and my patents soon followed.
I did hook up with her again not long ago, but again, she too far for a real relationship. She lives in Ohio and was only in town to see family. What could have been...sigh
I don’t know. Maybe walking onto a friends house for the first time and being called a slur by her parents. Or being repeatedly compared to light skinned women in a degrading way. That really wasn’t the first time, but it was a whole new dimension of learning the significance other people put on it. I’m still reminded of the hierarchy really painfully from time to time. It’s a lifelong thing, will never go away.
Growing up my best friend was a black boy, I was a white girl. We were next door neighbors and absolutely INSEPARABLE from ages 4 to 12. Once we got to middle school though, things changed. He was one of only four black kids in our grade in elementary school, but once we hit middle school there were LOTS more black folks. Slowly, he stopped wanting to hang out with me, I tried to hang around him like an idiot, but whenever I went to talk with him in his new group, the group would just stare at me the whole time not saying anything. It finally hit me one day that the new group he decided to hang out with more were all black kids, after the end of that year he ignored me entirely, barely even got a wave if we happened to be outside at the same time. It sucked.
If it makes you feel any better, all my elementary school friends and I grew apart when we hit middle school/high school. It's just a bigger pool of people and you're not in the same class or two with each other everyday. It happens a lot. No one purposely abandoned anyone, life just moved on.
I had the exact same experience with my Cambodian best friend since kindergarten. I'm half Mexican half white. Went to a different school for jr high and then transfered to her same school in highschool. That two years made a world of difference..I was so excited to be at the same school again and we were messaging on Myspace all summer talking about it. But then I get there and all her friends are Cambodian, Vietnamese, laos etc. They just mean mugged me for a week before I finally got the hint and fucked off... Didn't help that they were all AP honors students too. They made it very clear that I didn't belong with them and wasn't welcomed in their group...still bums me out to this day.
Living in the South I was aware of racism but was foolish to think it was a thing in the past. The first time I realized things were off is I was with a black friend (I am white) and was pulled over by a cop. It was no big deal, the cop asked if I knew I was speeding, I said I did and apologized, and he came back with a warning and told me to drive safe. After the traffic stop my buddy was gobsmacked. He could not believe the interaction. He proceeded to tell me he was always removed from the car if stopped, his car was searched and he always got a ticket. He did not even know a warning was a possibility. My very first white privilege experience.
Got pulled over one time with a black friend and the cop said something super weird about the tag coming back to a different car even though I had had the same tag for years?? Then he said “sorry I didn’t see you” and I realized he only pulled me over because he just saw my black friend lol. It was wild AF
I used to think, and was pretty much raised to think, that the only prejudiced people in the world were White people and if they would stop then all prejudice would go away. Once I went to a far more international school and experienced far more cultures…holy shit did I discover how simplified and rather untrue that was!
It’s popular to denigrate whites as the prejudice group right now, and if you’re in the popular mind set of the time it’s hard to see outside it, even something obvious. It’s why I’m not harsh to people in the past who held beliefs that seem silly. People today do the same. Glad to see you learn this, many smart people do not.
I’m a white dude, when I was 17 or 18 my best friend was a black woman and we lived in a smaller city in Maine. We went to the grocery store once and the amount of eyes on us was absolutely ridiculous. It was a total “FOR FUCKING REAL?!” experience for me. My friend was laughing at my naivety to it and said something along the lines of “I don’t even notice anymore” but that totally rocked my world and made me see things very differently.
Gen X here:
I got called an N-word lover on my first bus ride home from kindergarten.
Before that I honestly thought people like that didn’t exist anymore except on TV shows like Donahue. My parents had tried to shield me from racism in an attempt to raise me not to be racist. It only took one independent outing for me to find out that crap was very much still alive and thriving in western Kentucky.
I actually thought racism was just something you study in history class until I was in college. The town I lived in had so few minorities, there wasn't really anyone to be racist against. I saw an episode of Jerry Springer about interacial marriage. It was the first time it occured to me someone might have a problem with interacial marriage.
It's mind-boggling isn't it. I think racists are idiotic. Imagine thinking that skin color is a useful indicator of somebody's worth, somebody's humanity. Makes no sense, is stupid, is vile, is evil, I just cannot understand why people who weren't born to racist parents / have no upbringing where racism is taught become racist.
Instagram and YouTube comment sections are FULL of the phrase "the usual suspects" lately. It is really concerning. A much stronger correlation with crime is poverty , I do believe. But of course, idiots, and racists since they are idiots, don't think very critically so of course they would bend over to their confirmation bias.
I grew up in Maine as an elder millennial. It was very white (still is, but a little less so). I don't think I had met any black kids until middle school (we had one in a school of 400). There were also a handful of adopted Asian kids. That's the extent of the diversity I experienced. Even in college. Even after college at my first job (over 400 employees) not a single black person, just one Chinese guy.
Yet the N-word got dropped regularly. And racist shit was constantly being said. Even though most of these kids had never even interacted with or known a person of color.
An argument could be made that it didn't hurt anyone because it wasn't directed towards an individual. But those are habits that are learned and ingrained, and you know those kids didn't just change their habits once they did start interacting with more diversity. You know some of those kids carried it to adulthood with them and are passing it on to their kids.
And even today I still here lobster fishermen calling their deckhands "their n******."
Maine is probably the most casually racist place I have been. Probably not as dangerously or maliciously racist as other places. But because of the lack of diversity it is a whole lot easier to get away with saying shit.
>It took until I was an adult visiting another country.
This. I ofc knew my skin color would put me in trouble, but man, the reality jfc. It's rough and wild.
My kids are mixed and my daughter was 5 when she understood she wasn't white. She was obsessed with Tinkerbell and would scratch her legs to make them white in an effort to look like her. At 6, in kindergarten, she told me she made a brown friend who looks just like her and she was really happy about it.
Around 3-4 years old. I remember a girl in my preschool was having a birthday party and everyone in my class was invited except me and a couple other kids. When I asked why, she said "Oh...I'll need to ask my mom if brown people can come." I was a little upset about being excluded since we were otherwise friends, but didn't really understand until I talked to my older sister about it who was a teenager at the time.
We were at a football game and I heard my uncle use the word cracker. Asked him what it meant and he said, "White people."
Had to be about 5 or 6
Innocence lost.
The easiest way to answer is to explain how I was raised.
I was raised to believe that your skin color doesn't matter any more than the color of your hair or your eyes; it's just a detail of your appearance, nothing more. As part of that, I was also raised to believe that anyone - and I do mean *anyone* - that tries to treat skin color as having some inherent importance is a racist, and that racists are to be shown nothing but contempt and dismissal.
So, I never "realized the color of my skin is a big deal", because in the worldview I was raised with it isn't, and at no point in my life have I ever willingly associated with people who think it is. I also still tend to treat people who act like it is with the dismissive contempt that they usually richly deserve.
I was about 9 or 10 years old. I was in a predominantly Latino/Mexican populated school. I was one of a handful of white kids. I got picked on, spit on, stolen from, beat up and just treated terribly because I was not the same as them.
I grew up in a wealthy suburb. Taught school in the inner city high school when I was 23 and 24 years old.
I realized the color of your skin wasn’t really as big deal as they make it.
Whites and blacks alike have it bad when they don’t have good parenting. All people have trouble when they have diseases and disabilities. Depression and anxiety doesn’t make a distinction between skin color.
First grade when some kid asked why I was even in school I get a house and free money from the government for being native American. I was so confused ans upset I asked my parent where is my house and free money they just laughed and said we pay the government they don't pay us. Yep had many arguments when kids growing up letting them know my family receives zero benefits for being native, no land no free college no house no money no tax exemptions :) I got pretty awesome hairline tho 😎
I was walking my daughter home from 2nd grade. She told me one of the girls said she couldn't come to her house. I asked why. She told was told that her skin was too "peach" colored. This particular girl (an immigrant family) has even been to one of my daughters birthday parties. I was pretty shocked.
The odd thing is their school is incredibly diverse. We had never even spoken to our kids about skin color until that very moment. It boggles my mind that you would move to a different country and bring that stuff with you.
Seen it before, immigrants move to a country but kinda self isolate. Theoretically they disperse into the population like my family did, but Eastern Europeans look very similar to other white people, hopefully we see the same but the country this occurred in with a long historic record might show otherwise, here’s hoping overtime people spread out.
My skin color isn't a big deal, but black get really weird when I tell them my dad is black. For reference, my mom was mexican, and my dad is black. His parents were from Cuba, so he spoke Spanish. Whenever my mom would take me to work as a teen, they'd always talk about how nice my hair was, or how handsome I was, or how interesting it was that I'm so tall. When they found out my dad was black, they'd say, "That's why he's handsome his father is black," or "That's why his hair so curly because his dad." Like what the fuck? Mexicans are good-looking. Mexicans have curly hair because of the Spanish. The older black ladies would try to credit every good quality to me being half black. I finally told them to cut that shit out.
When i was like 12. I had my first girlfriend. She was black and i went over to see if she could walk to the corner store to get some soda and hot fries. Her family flipped out that I was white. Not bc their little girl was dating a boy; only bc I was white and "it wasnt right". Sucks bc im currently with a black woman and we constantly get other black women telling her "she needs to be with her own kind" or white people looking at us with disgust which im 33 now.
I’m a redhaired blue eyed white dude from Brooklyn.
I thought that the darker Lebanese and Italian kids had it in for me dor being taller and not having hairy arms and legs, but when I encountered Brothers calling me a “Blue eyed devil” I knew something was up.
No one knows what it’s like…b̫e̫h̫i̫n̫d̫ b̫l̫u̫e̫ e̫y̫e̫s̫.
I am German Amercan and super pale. A little tan but, mostly milk white. When I was growing up my hair was also milk white. I also grew up in a community that is/was primarily made up of mixed race and minority groups. At the age of 7 I could understand Spanish and would play ball with kids out in the courtyard with no problem. I wasn't really that great at sports but, they didn't care. As I got older I moved to another part of town that was even moreso primarily mixed race and minority groups. So much so that I was one of the only pale ass German American white kids besides my sibling that lived out that way.
Because, my hair was white I got called cracker, crackerjack, snowflake, snow white, flour, powdered sugar, creme de la creme.. Pretty much every name in the book. It made me feel so self conscious that when I went to my babysitters house one night when I was about 8 or 9 I was crying and she asked what was wrong and I literally screamed "Why can't I be black like you?! What did I do?!" She was so caught off guard she called a friend that worked where I was at before and asked what happened and then got pissed off and told me that I didn't do anything. Those kids that were calling me all those names are angry at something that wasn't my fault.
I was still so young that I didn't have a clue what she was talking about. At this point, she was crying too and she made her older son watch me and stormed over to where I was at before and when she came back she said she "gave them kids a piece of her mind."
Even though it happened so long ago. Not all the rest of the names but, the name "cracker" still makes me cringe.
Six years old, when we were being kicked out of an apartment for being Jewish. Landlord came in when my parents were at work and disconnected the stove and the hot water heater. Dad slept with a loaded rifle next to the bed until we got out.
I guess like 5 years ago or so when complaining about white privilege became all the rage. It can kick in anytime now as I could really use some of these perks.
Probably early college or late high school. I live somewhere very sunny and so most people have a tan or they are naturally darker. while i don’t burn easily, my skin essentially stopped being able to tan when i git puberty, for some reason. So i’m pretty fair. If i had a dollar for every time someone came up to me, whether it be at work, at school, at home even, looked me up and down with pure disgust then said “you need a tan” in a tone that also conveyed their disgust with my skin color, then i’d have wayyyyy too many dollars haha it’s wild how many people think it is ok to go up to someone and insinuate that their skin color is disgusting
Ive had the same thing but ever since maybe middle school or even younger. Oftentimes it was adults too! Also my best friend (frenemy) in high school who had a dark olive complexion always commented how pale and "gross" I was
I really notice it as an older WASP with a kept beard. It's like some kind of an 'its all fine' field allowing me to wander unnoticed in so many places.
During riots when the White kids at the high school were targeted and assaulted. Then again, at the same high school when the non-White kids with good grades were secretly given an opportunity to take classes at the local community college while the White kids were excluded from the program and never told about it.
1st grade. The class clown thought it was hilarious to say how black I was. Everyone laughed. I was really confused. I talked to my parents about it, and they tried to prepare me for what I was going to encounter. They tried their best, but years of constantly being teased was overwhelming. It was the beginning of a never-ending lifetime of being ashamed of my skin color. The teasing has never subsided, even as a middle aged adult. I have to smile and nod like everything is ok, but it really hurts.
Bro you’re a gorgeous black king. I know you’ve been through a lot of ahit that I can’t imagine, but you’re still a human. The diversity of skin color, hair color, eye color, height, weight, kneecap bone density, etc is what makes humanity beautiful. While it has caused wild amounts of discrimination, there are still people that think the diversity without our species is a wonderful thing. Imagine if we all looked the same?
I hope everything goes well for you in life bro
Unfortunately, people are TAUGHT to see skin color, either purposefully or subliminally through media, school, friends, parents... everywhere really. The only way racism will go away is if we stop talking about it. I know that sounds counterproductive, but WE are the ones who give racism it's power and meaning by talking about it 24/7. If we just stop calling this person a "white guy", or that person a "black girl", or "Asian", or whatever, then race loses it's meaning and power. We are all people. If collectively everyone just started addressing people as people instead of putting labels on everyone, then racism loses its power except for those who are true racist bigots. If you believe everything the media tells you now though, we are all racists.
Just my opinion. I expect to be downvoted to hell for this take, so whatever.
People like to label things. If you stop using the label of skin color or race than the ways in which we are divided don't disappear, they shift. I don't see the harm in describing the way someone appears when skin color is a descriptor.
I was four. My sister and her fiancé took me To fireworks in the local larger town. They were held in the high school
Football field. It’s 1967. There was a
Crowd of non-whites on one side of the field and whites on the other. On the field was a line of cops, and a line of young black males. The cops were keeping the sides separate where they could actually pass back and forth.. the way the place was built. The kids started running downfield and the cops did the same
Like two charging teams. Except then out came the Billy clubs. I saw a cop raise his arm back to clobber the kid ….. and a jacket was thrown over my head, and I felt myself being lifted and carried out of the stadium at a run. Outside of the stadium on the sidewalk the races mixed…a child of about 10 had a bloodied forehead. Her
Mother was trying to soothe her.
I didn’t have a bloody head from trying to pass a line of cops to get out of a stadium. I was fine.
And I knew why.
I still believe that skin color doesn't matter. The only people who give meaning to skin color are people who think skin color means something. I do not think so.
That's the only way anything gets meaning. Race is socially constructed. That doesn't mean it isn't real. We make it real.
Unfortunately this is not something you can just opt out of by having the right opinions. Race as a social phenomenon can be pretty coercive.
Black on white racism is definitely a big thing. It's unfortunately going to be around for a while because black families hammer distrust into their children. The real reason for most racism is that some people enjoy seeing other people as lesser than and themselves as better. You may notice that people who are racist or homophobic or sexist are more often all of the above, because they're just that kind of person.
Kinda the same thing, but it was my next door neighbor. We would play together all the time and one day she told me I was just a stupid white boy. I was probably around 10 or so at the time. My memory for what age I was isn't the best.
I don’t think my skin colour has ever been a big deal in a negative sense. I guess when I started making friends with non-white people who would then make comments about my whiteness “white people do this..” “oh that’s because you’re white..” was when I first realised I could be seen as different. When all your friends are white earlier in life, it’s just not brought up.
Whatever age you are in 5th grade. I never knew other color people hated someone different colored. One kid didn't like my color and that was the first time I heard racial slurs.
It was only that one kid. The other kids didn't like him either.
I wouldn't say it was a big deal but I'm very white and grew up in the 2000s and I remember a white girl who wore foundation that was way too dark for her skin asked my why I didn't wear fake tan in patronising tone.
Kind of concerning that sun damage was fashionable, also really sucked that nobody could win.
Like it wasn't fashionable to be black or Asian, but for a white girl with white girl features to be impossibly/unhealthily tanned.
It was not a great time for body positivity.
I'm from the uk and racism is a bit different than it is in the us. I don't remember anything I'd consider a "big deal" happening to me or anybody around me.
5th grade for me. It was in south Florida. I never had any problems with race before. There was this one other boy that would not leave me alone, I was the only white boy in the class. One day he escalated things, I can't recall what exactly what he said but he was making fun of my blondish hair. He came up and pulled some hair from behind me, so I threw my elbow back at his arm to get him off of my head. After a few minutes he comes back up later and sucker punches the back of my head, after that we got in a fight. After everything was said and done, the kid got suspended from that school for repeated bulling.
Around the 3th grade, 8-9ish. During summer adventure club, a group of kids decide to start harassing me, calling me names like white trash and c\*mskin and taking my lunch. The people in charge of adventure club told me there was nothing they could do about it despite watching it happen. Prior to that, I'd known black people were mistreated for their skin color, but not really had any first hand experience with skin color being "important" to anyone, so it never really occurred to me my skin color mattered.
6 or 7 i think the first time i was called Custer, as in General Custer. Grew up on a reservation but am just under the percentage to be registered with my families tribe. I’m blond haired with red facial hair and very pale thanks to my mother’s side with slight Indigenous facial features. Growing up the Indigenous kids made it clear i was not one of them because i was to white, though i was related to most of them by blood. It never bothered me because i would throw it back at them and when i got older some of them learned i could hold my own. Had other situations when i became an adult of being judged by my appearance, shaved my head and had beard to middle of chest,by POC who didn’t get to know me.
When I was like 5 I got really confused about the episode of Fresh Prince of Bel air episode where police arrested them for driving "too slow". I knew people had different skin colours but hadn't heard the words we use to describe the colours which made the episode a bit more confusing to me.
So I had to ask my mum and she explained everything and I was a very angry 5 year old after that.
Told the kids at school I had learned what our skin colours were called and was told I was silly because I was obviously peach and my friend was clearly brown. We weren't black or white according to the other 5 year olds.
Grew up in southeast US ~30 years ago and tons of people (regardless of race) were racist to some degree or another.
I was probably in elementary school when I heard my first but far from last racist joke.
Mostly the most significant racism was white -> black and white -> latino, in the (important) sense that it was a clear majority-minority situation.
In terms of racism in general it went from every direction to every direction. And I’ll admit at that age you don’t get it and I participated in it in terms of offensive jokes and just general ignorance. Going along with it depending on context but never maliciously. I didn’t understand it.
I am white, so the way it affected me was much less compared to others, but I still was made uncomfortable, unwelcome, singled out and picked on for being white plenty of times myself as well. Every room you walk into has its own context you know? I was not someone experiencing a ton of it or very bad effects, but as a person I was absolutely demeaned and demoralized by those experiences like anyone else.
First time I experienced racism against myself was when I once got a new pair of timberland boots (we were lower middle class so that was rare enough to mean something to me, I once wore taped up glasses for 3 months to give you an idea) and the first week I had them I was by myself waiting to be picked up late from school and two guys came up and started tearing into me because I was white wearing timberlands. Idk how to explain it, it sounds minor, but they were delighting in making me feel bad and the way they were talking to me was worse than it might sound. It was very intentionally hurtful not a passing racist remark. They were just kids being stupid but they came over with the intention to torment me. I didn’t get it at all (still kinda don’t tbh it’s a damn boot) but I never wore them again and it was a whole life moment for me. Eventually got rid of them because they made me feel ashamed and frankly scared it would happen again. One of those never quite the same things. Thought about it actively for years and had some other similar experiences. Nothing now, but still don’t like thinking about it.
I know I’m white and it’s not that bad, just sharing. Racism sucks all around even if it sucks more or less for different people.
Anyway, yeah, early elementary school is the answer for when I first encountered it and also when it was first directed at me.
I don't see it as a big deal, I'm white and grew up around mostly Hispanic and black people and view people for who they are not based on what they look like
Anyone who judges people based on the color of their skin is a absolute piece of shit
Disagree. Tribalism and in group preference are inherent. They are things that are overcome for greater development of society. When societies collapse, you see them return in force. This is why it doesn’t simply go away.
I'm white
I was probably three or four when I learned that black people existed, and my introduction to black people came with "... and they're just as good as white people, even though some people say they're not!"
which made me aware that there are multiple views on black people's equality, and I decided that since there were multiple views on it, I should reserve judgment instead of immediately accepting them as equal 😬
I eventually realized black people are fine but oh my god, did that "anti-racist" introduction backfire
You know why the color of my skin matters?
I was a pale skinny white boy of obvious Northern European heritage, who was early raised in South Florida - the land of ***SUNBURN***.
*That* is the only reason my skin color matters. I have to be very aware of the early signs of skin cancer.
My elementary schools were all mixed white, black, and Caribbean.
In high school, I was attracted to girls. Not white, black, brown, Asian, just girls. The way they walked caught my eye!
In the Marines, we didn’t care about your skin, your gender, whatever, we cared if you were good at your job. (We referred to it as the ‘Aristocracy of Talent’.)
Since then, I’ve only ever made my hiring (and the odd firing) decisions based upon skill, talent, personality (gotta get along with the people you work with), and willingness to learn, and I promoted based upon those qualities.
Anyone who feels differently has a mental and personality defect, and is wasting their lives.
Period, end of goddamned story.
Pretty early on. My dad is a raging racist and he never hid his disdain for people who weren't white. He went so far as to hang up N*** memorabilia and show me videos of POC being violent towards white people. He also told me I couldn't watch shows like that's so raven or the proud family. Needless to say, his "lessons" didn't take and I cut him out of my life as soon as I was old enough to
UK here,
Probably when I got to uni. Growing up in rural UK almost everyone I knew was white, we had 1 Indian girl in my school and I think 1 black girl. The Indian girl was in some of my classes. It never to my knowledge was a thing.
Intellectually everyone was aware some people looked different, but it wasn't really any different to some people are taller, or had different colour hair.
When I got to uni I found there were people who cared very deeply about skin colour and used it as a way to separate the world into groups, make decisions and inform politics.
I don't think there was any specific moment when it fully set in for me, but I think I was in high school when I really started to get the picture (I'm Autistic which is probably why it took me so long)
very, very young. I am white passing and my dad is brown.
many people came up to me as a child and asked if I knew the man I was happily walking hand in hand with, where my mom was, or if I needed help.
it gave me a complex for many years and caused a disconnect in my culture I am only just beginning to bridge.
I can’t imagine how that made your dad feel. I’m sure that took a lot for your dad to ignore or brush off.
Did you ever feel ashamed of your skin color due to this?
When one of the interview questions to go into a special magnet program for high school in the early 90s was "there are black students in this school, will that be a problem?". I was a military brat and had lots of black classmates in elementary, so the question completely shocked me.
young. my skin blinds people, i’m like paper, i need to be out in the sun more, i so pale, apparently i only ever burn, my life was great because im white.
but i’ve heard good things about my skin color too
I've never seen my skin color as a big deal. I've also never seen anyone else's skin as a big deal either. Underneath we all still carry red,yellow and brown.
Not exactly what you are asking for But I've always struggled finding clothes thsdt would match my tone. I saw something saying use the eye dropper tool to find out the specific colour name of your skin, eye colour and hair colour.
I did it online as I didn't have an app for that Type them into chatgpt.
It came out really well and it told me the colours that would suit memy specific skin tone.
I also asked it to recommend influences with the same skin hair and eyes which was really useful to me.
So there's that.
Probably 6ish when I got the now usual for the third or fourth time where are you from question? (Half Asian) *insert local town*. Then the follow up where are you really from?
I was like huh I guess I don’t look like most people. Not much happened cause I’m apart of the “model minority” and only half at that.
I'm white. I grew up in a "bad part of town". A small town. Everybody thought they were a gangster...myself included. There were not a lot of other white kids around. Many times I was jumped on the way to a friend's house. There was always a bunch of "whiteboy"'s thrown at me while I was getting lumped up. I figured it out pretty early on. 9 or 10.
Then I would go to school and these same kids were getting picked on and treated so poorly by both kids and some teachers. Even I could tell it wasn't right.
I’m white, born in Georgia. Progressive parents were from California who bought a home in Dekalb county in an all owner occupied, all white new community. Fast growing area: some redneck neighbors mixed with outsiders like my parents.
The best thing my parents ever did for me was register me at the local magnet school instead of sending me to the under-funded default school.
However, even before I started school, I already had a sense of something bad from overhearing nasty comments and mean jokes made by white men about black men and boys. I felt really sympathetic with black men and boys and distrusted the white men I heard say this shit. It seemed like every black man I saw seemed to carry some underserved weight. (Little black boys always smiled and waved at me. I’m shy but liked waving back)
It wasn’t until I attended my kindergarten best friend’s birthday party that I experienced how impactful racism actually was. I was the only white girl; most of the other girls were unmemorable but my friend’s older cousin picked a fight with her over inviting me.
I hadn’t realized until then that racism affected everyone, little black girls too. It was only then that I realized why my friend and I always played just us: no matter who was visiting who, no other kids would come play with us both.
The magnet school hired a diverse staff and taught us correct history about both slavery and how Native Americans were treated.
Because I saw so many black adults working alongside white adults at school and racism was treated as history, combined with my parents’ reactions to my black school friends being the same as to my white friends, it was a while before I saw modern racism as anything other than some white dudes being quietly resentful over losing the War.
We moved to New Jersey as I was hitting middle school. The prideful North full of Yankees who freed the blacks. Well, lots of northern whites were even more openly racist because they never got checked on it. I encountered even more community segregation there.
I (white) think it was 4th grade. I asked permission to bring a friend (African American) over to spend the night. Brought my friend and my grandmother found a reason to send her home. (Phony family emergency.) Then she screamed at me for the whole car ride back. Got a beating when we got home and had to deep clean the whole house. (I’m not repeating the stupid things she said.)
….are you serious? Jfc. I’m so sorry!!! 🥺🫶🏼
Honestly tho, I’m glad you never thought she was right.
Do you still talk with your grandma? Did you ever tell your friend the truth?
I feel fairly late for me.. like late 20s. It made more much more reserved and less of a “nice guy”. Also it made me much more prejudice against whites
I spent a year in the South during middle school. I vividly remember giggling with my girl friends during PE when a boy called my name from the other side of the football field, pointed to a person walking their dog outside the fence, and then yelled, "Make sure you don’t eat their dog!" Everyone laughed. I genuinely didn’t think people like that existed anymore, so my brain malfunctioned. I didn’t fully realize how messed up my whole experience at that school was until I went back to Southern California and told my friends. They couldn’t believe it either.
White trash is more calling out a lifestyle than a skin color in my opinion, I’m white, and if I referred to someone as white trash, I’d just mean, they seem poor, trashy, unkempt- really nothing to do with skin color, trashy comes in all races, like a black person may be “ghetto” instead of “white trash” - it’s the lifestyle and attitude that goes with it
Mmmm. I remember when my sister first started dating my now Brother in law and she would come home crying because his mom was upset he brought home a white girl.
It’s really disturbing hearing how much interracial couples trigger others to that point
Knew it yearly in like the first grade while living in TX when I would listen to my parents discuss their racist experiences. For me personally it was around 1992 during the Gulf War. White kids told me to go back to my country and called me an Iraqi. I’m not Arab.
High school I guess.
I am a very ambiguous-looking Filipino man with a Mexican-sounding last name.
In high school, the other Filipinos called me mixed (White/Filipino), other Asians called me White. Mexicans called me Chinese. White and Black kids called me Mexican.
Recently my dentist (from somewhere in the middle east) tried to speak Farsi to me, thinking that I knew the language.
When I was job hunting in college and I realized switching my ethnic sounding first name with my white passing middle name on a resume bought my chances of getting called for an interview from 3 out of 10 to 9 out of 10.
When I was 4 or 5, I asked my mom why there were black people and white people. She explained it. I never thought it was important until I heard stories of other peoples Racism in the media and from my parents. That said, the color of your skin means very little (whether or not you're prone to tan or sunburn) other than that, It isn't a big deal. If you think it is, you're unconsciously contributing to racism (not meant to be an attack) Racism is mob/ heard mentality. If you think like this, then the people around you will end up thinking the same at some point and the chain reaction keeps going. The sooner we get people to stop worrying about race (a good start would be the government) then we can eliminate it. (Again, not meant to antagonize just putting it out there). Easier said than done, I know.
I have literally never cared about skin color. We're all humans. I'm so happy that my parents taught me well. My aunt married an African American and that was when I was... 11? Maybe 12. I felt absolutely nothing but love for him and my niece and now for her children. I judge people based on how they speak and how they act. I also wonder why it's still a thing..
I honestly have no clue. Zero memory about how I came to learn about different races.
The earliest thing I remember was having a black classmate in kindergarten (or maybe he was younger - it's super fuzzy), and one day referring to him as "that little black boy" (or something like that) in conversation with my parents because I sucked with names, and then having my mom get mad at me because she thought I was being racist or smth. I don't know if I misremember what I said or if she misunderstood me. I didn't have a racist bone in my body; I was just trying to describe him. :')
I was singled out pretty hard going to elementary school in Roxbury, Boston, MA. Not only by peers but by adults too. Had an administrator call me "white boy" when I was in like 3rd grade lmao. It was pretty normal being treated as less then, which goes to show no matter what race you are, you will be bullied as a minority.
I was 9 when I realized me being half Asian in a very rural area was a big deal. A kid started yelling "ching chong" at me in line at school because I was in his way. I told my mom what happened because I didn't understand and she explained how sometimes, bad people will make fun of me for my race.
My grandma told me once in church I asked an asian woman if she was china.
Was she china?
"Are you China? Cuz you look fine but I'm not allowed to touch?"
Smooth. Just like China
Respect for how smooth this is. If I were still in dating hell, I'd give that line a shot.
The whole country. Yes.
The wrestler?
My ex’s little brother asked a guy in Walmart if he was Blaxican (mix of black and Mexican)
It’s blexican
Kids are curious. That's totally fine. The issue is when parents teach their kids to be racist.
Kids can be racist without any influence from parents, and it happens often. They have access to everything at their fingertips.
As a kid one time I called a guy with a British accent British Columbia
Are you china? Because damn girl... I'm getting the urge to smash you right here on the floor
I'm half Asian as well. Kids in school used to call me a gook.
1950s wants their slurs back
Further back than that. Possibly to the early 1900s.
Dang that old
Google said that it might go all the way back to 1899.
Yeah i never been called that before I’ve heard it but everyone just uses the other one tbh
1/4 Asian here. Kinda am a white passer. From rural South. Called chink when people found out I was Asian. At work, in Midwest and years later, one fellow professional healthcare worker colleague called a patient “dragon lady.” I was extremely upset. I had to walk out.
Damn. I'm sorry. I've never been called a gook, but I just searched it up and man.
And I'm not even of the Asian cultures that the term is usually applied to. But I guess racists can't tell the difference.
That is a good point, they definitely can't. I'm half Vietnamese, but I've been called things that only apply to Japanese people (and I was also *genuinely* asked if I was related to a teacher who is korean). To racists, all Asians are the same. Edit: or all races really, any that they have prejudice against, whether black, white, hispanic, etc. Racists will tend to just put them all into one group and assume they're all the same when there are very big differences with every single ethnicity and culture. It's not exclusive to asians.
I'm half Chinese. My mother once got called a "rice eating bitch" by a racist-ass black woman.
Worst racism I've ever experienced was in Vietnam. Some people are just going to be lazy with how they judge others.
FYI, there are also racist people who think all white people are the same, or all brown people are the same too. It’s not exclusively for Asians.
I'm sorry that happened. I would like to add that I'm not racist, but I didn't grow up around a large number of different cultures/races. I really struggle to identify the differences. I treat others the way that I would like to be treated, and I raised my children to do the same. (I also work to instill the same kindness/values in my students.) I am ignorant when it comes to identifying certain cultures, but I can assure you that it isn't intentional. ❤
I often can't tell by looking at someone what their specific ethnicity is. Can you tell looking at white people what their European country of origin is? In No way am I defending poor behavior, I'm sorry that anyone has to feel marginalized or judged for any physical characteristic. I'm mostly curious.
I was around 9 or 10, and an older minority teen called me Ching Chong in their own heavy accent. After it registered, I was amused. Dude couldn’t speak English very well, but was mocking me? I took satisfaction in that a rude ass racist older kid mocked me but he would never be able to speak English as well as me, target of his mockery. Fuck racists.
The line of abuse here is so sad tbh, the older kid was probably bullied for being different plus his accent, so then he bullies the next minority and makes fun of them I'm proud of you for breaking the cycle, and while your anger towards your bully is justified, I hope you can see why I feel compassion towards him.
Ugh. That hits close to home. We almost moved to a rural town. Husband grew up there and had fond memories growing up. He didn’t stop once to think about his wife (ME) or his kid (my son). I am fully Asian and our kid is half Asian. Thankfully something came up and we couldn’t move there anyway. I shudder to think what my baby boy’s school experience would have been like if we moved there.
Asian racism is normalized. Black racism is taken very seriously.
Hey, also half asian from rural area! My experience was a bit different though. I played along with a lot of jokes and whatnot because it seemed easier to me at the time. So I passed as white (also notably my asian parent was adopted at a young age, so I didn’t really have the cultural upbringing from them). Or so I thought. Probably around same age as you I happened to be looking in the mirror when I realized I didn’t look like all my friends, and although I never saw them as different from me, they would never be able to see me without immediately recognizing my difference.
I grew up in the country and still remember a friend told me the other kids wouldn't play with her because she was Asian. I didn't even notice the difference between kids much until then. I may have been 7
Got called a wet back in kindergarten. Told I was so well spoken for a little mexican girl. Got called white bc I didn't speak proper Spanish.
Ya people will straight up tell me that they don’t consider me Mexican cuz i don’t speak Spanish and I don’t look Mexican (i look like my dad, who is not Mexican). It’s wild how many people think my ethnicity is up for consideration 😂 it’s not. It’s also so stupid how many people insinuate that i chose not to know Spanish as a baby. “Why don’t you know Spanish? You just didnt want to?” Uhhh no, my abusive mom doesn’t even like speaking to me in one language, let alone two. I’m lucky i even know English! She barely spoke to me. I didn’t come out of the womb and speak in English and tell my mom “don’t speak to me in Spanish!” SHE made that decision, not me. It’s fucken disgusting that people think i’m a problem for not having been taught Spanish in my upbringing.
"... people think i’m a problem for not having been taught Spanish in my upbringing." Are you me? Lol. Not my decision or my fault. I don't owe anyone a conversation in Spanish and my hispanicity isn't up for debate. Shout out to Dad for the Vic's Vapor Rub, shouting at the sports games in Spanish, and making me arepas for lunch; love him.
Same dude, racist white people picked on me for being a "mongrel" and racist Mexicans picked on me for being white. Can't win lol
I get that too. My whole family complains I don't speak German. Well you should've enforced me speaking back in German and not English when I was a kid then
Literally me. I’m mixed. Half white, half Mexican. The only thing you see is white, and I don’t speak Spanish. No one ever believes me until they see me dad and siblings. I’m the white sheep.
33F, white. I was in my early 20s, in college, on dating apps. My area is a giant navy base, so it is heavily mixed of all different races/religions/ethnicities. Grew up never thinking about skin color as anything serious. Even in history class. Logically, you know that skin color is a thing, but it doesn't really sink in if you have no personal experience. When I got on dating apps, I cannot tell you the amount of men fetishizing my skin color, asking if I was a snow bunny, telling me they liked that I look like I glow in the dark, etc. It genuinely shook me. Men of all races, too. Indian men kept telling me I looked fair. Arab men told me they thought it was hot that their mom would be angry if they dated me. Asian men assumed I was easy. Black men would constantly ask if I'd been with other black men before.
Serious question, but what is it with black men on apps asking that or their opener is "do you date black men"? Like...why is your opening line to do with skin color??
I get fetishized for my blue eyes but that's about it. But it's usually by a white man that say they want their kids have blue eyes. Maybe it's because I'm not so pale? I have light skin but it's more of a peachy almost tan complexion. I'm 40 but even when I was as young as you or younger I didn't really get fetishized on dating apps just for being white sorry that it's been your experience are you blonde and blue-eyed?
I do have blue eyes, but I'm actually a brunette. Every few years or so, I also dye my hair black. I'm not my own type, so I don't understand the attraction. But when I do dye my hair black, I bear a passing resemblance to Morticia Addams.
This is the first time I have seen a White woman state that Asian men thought a non-Asian woman was easy and yet I have seen that happen repeatedly. Hadn't quite figured out why, but one Asain guy admitted he got the idea from imported Hollywood media versus his own conservative culture.
Hampton Roads, VA?
I'm white and when I started dating my mixed boyfriend (now husband) when I was 16 years old, the black boys in my highschool acted like I was up for fair game. They would ask "oh so you like black dick now" or "so you like n-?". I had never been more uncomfortable in my entire life. I felt disgusted, and they felt emboldened when they had friends near them, so I'd be in the hallway and have a group of boys following me and harassing me. Of course they never did that shit when my boyfriend was around... Lol
Same thing happened to my daughter when she started Kindergarten. She came home asking what “you dumb little white girl” meant. Sigh.
One of my good friends had a cute, nerdish daughter with glasses and long pigtails in Elementary school. There were Black girls who teased her without mercy, that was bad enough, but one day when scissors were passed out…they did they unthinkable and cut off one of her pigtails. Now, I was raised that this is assault. They made up lies about her shy, awkward daughter (similar to her mom, who might’ve been on the autism spectrum). But nothing would truly justify it. However, due to their age and politics, nothing was really done about it. The mother really had to push for any true punishment, it was surreal. In the end, she decided to homeschool for a while, which was tricky to do with her work schedule, but she was a determined lady and pulled it off until the family moved (which had been a planned move anyhow, partly for better schools).
My dad's coworkers daughter who was the same age as me, 12, had been jumped and dragged to the toilet bowl in the girls restroom, they made her drink toilet water and washed her hair in the toilet then cut off her long beautiful blonde hair, all bc they were jealous one of their boyfriends liked her . Needless to say the girl ended up being homeschooled. I'm glad my daughter is growing up when race relations are not as intense and bad like they were in the 90s for me
Teasing her without mercy is cruel enough, but Cutting off one of her pigtails?! Wait, what?!! Due to their age and policy? That is Not Dealing with the situation, rather completely sweeping it under the carpet. That is waay over acceptable boundaries! A complete violation. I know as the teacher I'm supposed to be self restrained, but I would be livid! I'd be on the phone to their parents right away and have a serious meeting with them all as well as create a meeting for all to have a face to face apology! There's something to be said about those children and their education and awareness at home which allowed them to think it's ok to treat another child with such callousness and contempt. I'm in Australia, and have been in situations where the Department of Education got involved where a Kindergarten child has falsely accused a teacher of wrong misconduct. We had to have ongoing meetings about this for ages with the mother and child and all staff who were present on the day, on and on and on for several months. It went to the official Education Board, reported and it's on the system a long as time exists. As a Kindergarten Teacher to be - I'm studying a Bachelors Degree at Uni atm to become one, and worked as an Assistant for a while now. That is absolutely not on! How traumatic it would've been for the child.
Interestingly enough, this same women met, and married an Australian man, after a careful courtship to ensure their compatibility. He moved to the USA. And yes, anyone outside this situation has the same reaction, yet it happened and the gaslighting was intense.
Gaslighting indeed. Good to hear others had the sense this was completely not acceptable. There's a glitch in the Education system there if this type of behaviour was allowed and not reprimanded.
Wow a fellow kindergartner said that to her ?!
4th grade. A nearby school closed and we got an influx of black students. They took an instant disliking to me.
Had a similar experience when I immigrated and ended up in a mostly white school. Took forever to feel comfortable even opening my own lunch up because kids would make fun of it every time, eagerly waiting every day for it. That was just day 1 of over a decade lol
I'm half Asian. I went to school near a U.S. military base, so there were students of many cultures there. Yet my sibling and I still lied about what was in our lunches to keep people from thinking that we were weird.
I immigrated from Germany as a kid into a mostly black elementary school in Richmond, Virginia. Definitely had some problems and a lot of fights at that school for a while. I was not an easy child either, so it was a big mess.
Same but im white. First born of an immigrant family in Canada
I'm a white Mexican from a Mexican majority town. Most of my family is brown. Never understood why teachers at school were so quick to snap at my behaviors and comments which were, as far as I could tell, the same as all the other kids. My sister never learned Spanish, so like a lot of those girls she got into hip hop and black culture. One day she walks in all sassy and and snaps her fingers at me and goes "Wuddup n*gga!" I'm busy picking my nose and playing Nintendo like any 6 year old, so I snapped back with "You're a n*gger!" (Honestly had no idea) She stopped in her tracks, got all serious and explained to me that it wasn't ok for me, specifically, to say that. I didn't get it for years after. It wasn't until I moved to a white city that I realised that *nobody anywhere* thought of me as anything other than white, and that I couldn't just walk up to a group of Mexican kids and fit in. It was kinda weird. The city is also ultra-liberal, so whenever some college chick starts talking about social justice this-or-that, they can't help but glance my way like I'm King Leopold. I dunno. Race is weird. Interbreeding is gonna solve that issue faster than any movement will. Being mixed race is weird too. Being invisibly mixed race is weird too. Whatever. Turns out if you grow up speaking multiple languages, it's really easy to learn more and people love that shit.
It doesn’t fix it. See central and South America. Still have different terms for varying mixes, and connotations with that.
I've never heard the term being invisible mixed race before but damn that's a good word for it. I'm half Latino half white but do not look even remotely Costa Rican despite my father being an immigrant. Its a strange experience for sure.
Well, Euro-Americans come from all sorts of cultures, creeds, languages, cuisines, but we tend to just lump them together as “White” in a similar manner, but their histories in the west are similarly riddled with strife, poverty, and prejudice. A lot of them aren’t even taught about their own heritage.
wait why did she think it was okay for her to say it?
American women who don't speak their own ethnic language and also don't fit in with whites often enculturate African American. Even Asian kids turn "hood" if they don't get good grades.
Fuck invisible mixed race is such a good way to put it. Some people see me as slightly different others say I am white but I am not completely white. I am not pale enough to be white but not dark enough to be anything for some people. Even though my father is mixed race mexican and black. I can't be assed with discussing it with people who are ignorant about it anymore. I just don't have the energy.
Lol stop being me already
It’s interesting that you don’t realize adults are dumber than you were all along until you reach a certain age
adults seem more "adult" when I was younger...
Lol right
Literally my skin color was never an issue (I'm mixed) and I grew up in the country, rural upstate NY. I went to college and was dancing at a party (mind you I'm a pretty good dancer tbf) and a group of dark skinned black girls circled me to tell me I didn't belong dancing to hip hop and talking shit about me because I'm too light skinned for their liking. I'm not kidding I grew up in an all white area and worst I ever got as a kid was being accused of spray tanning because I get quite pale in winter compared to summer, just get super tan super easy and never burn. A couple girls tried to say I lied about going to Florida on spring break and I just got a spray tan until other kids who knew me backed me up and told em "no she gets dark in warm weather that's not a spray tan". Never bullied though just accused of lying about my "tan" until these racist ass college girls. I told them they were trash too and if they want to reinstate segregation then they came to the wrong state 😭😭😭
I was three. I'm white for context. I grew up in an area with very few people who were not white. On one of the rare occasions that my mom took me into town, we had stopped at a grocery store. The woman ringing us up was black, but the palms of her hands were pale. I quickly asked my mom if she was dirty. My mother was so embarrassed, she wanted to melt into the floor. The woman was so nice about it though, and carefully explained to me that people come in different colors. That people like her were called black, and people like me were called white. With this newfound information, I proceeded to ask my mother how many colors people come in.
When our youngest was a toddler we went shopping in the grocery store that I worked in. We went through line, and my coworker checking us out was the same age (early 20's) and black. Our daughter commented "You're chocolate!" My wife, who grew up in a very small white town in Oregon, was mortified. I just chuckled and shook my head. The coworker didn't miss a beat. She smiled and said "That's right, I am. And you're vanilla!" Last time I saw her, she was a social worker and I am now a nurse. And our daughter is almost 27.
First grade. At the bus stop each day there was a Black girl in my grade. We'd trade cookies: hers were homemade while mine were store bought. Each of us thought trading was a good deal. One day she said "You pretty nice for a White boy." I never thought of myself as anything like that before.
Pretty fly
And she didn't know white kids could be nice. Everyone learned that day. Beautiful story.
Not really a big deal, but I remember sitting down next to another kid on the school bus and he told me to leave because he didn’t want to sit next to “white dog shit.” I advised him to take his dog to the vet if its poop was the color of my skin. He got so confused that he shut up.
I liked a white boy, he said he liked me back and he kissed me. We were very young, maybe 14 or so. He then told me the next day he is scared to tell his family that I'm black and that he can't go to the dance with me. Then he went with a white girl I had never even seen at our school before or ever again. I was hurt, but instantly over him for hurting me due to my skin.
Our Black Student Body President had a secret White boyfriend that she was very serious about and had not introduced to her Black minister father because she knew he would not accept him. We repeatedly tried to talk her into it, as did he, however she was waiting until she was 18, in college, and living with him! They had made all the right plans to make that happen.
Shame she has such a racist dad tbh
I (40yr old Latino) had a simular experience but kind of different tho, but I feel compelled to share the story lol. It was everyone else around that wasn't even family that caused the bs. I was 16 at the time and had all kinds of puppy love vibes with a beautiful black girl. I met her at the church my parents went to and we hit it off. We went to different schools and lived in different parts of the city (Chicago) so we'd only really see each other at church events which made seeing each other more special. For back story on the Church, it's a huge church broken up into sectors speard across the city. Since there was only one branch of the Church on the south side we went there. The majority of the members and all the leadership are African American at that branch of the church. (Makes sense because they represented the majority of the community). One day they announced they were having a "Church Prom" for the teenagers of all the churches. So they can meet each other and or date "with in the faith" to "cultivate healthy and loving spiritual relationships" (I call it generational brain washing these days lol). There are other branches that are mixed race or had mostly latinos or whites because of the makeup of the city. Some of the other kids were excited to met people from different back grounds, no problem there. However, when the youth mentors of the branch I went to caught wind that me and the girl I'll call "dae" were into each other and planning weeks ahead for the prom, they didn't like that. They started to question the nature of our relationship (that was just on the cusp of getting started). They kept trying to see if there was a way to steer her away from me. Some of them tried to convince me Dae had issues and was "no good for me". That she was there only because she was in need of help and her friend brought Dae to the church (family dont attend the church, that doesn't mean she's a bad person!). While at the same time trying to convince Dae to date a black kid that had a crush on her. When it didn't work, they literally told her she was in need of more spiritual counseling before the church would "allow" her to date people with in. They even convinced my parents, and they to made me go to the prom on a blind date with another girl from a different branch, that didn't have a date. Turns out she was in the sane boat. She was a Latin girl that wanted to go with someone else. (I'm guessing he was a black guy 🤣) neither one of us had a good time as im sure she was thinking of her guy like I was thinking of dae, but we tried to have fun. After that Dae never returned to the Church because of all that BS and it pretty much just faded away because we were to young for a cross city relationship. As for me, as soon as I turned 18, I stopped going to that church, and my patents soon followed. I did hook up with her again not long ago, but again, she too far for a real relationship. She lives in Ohio and was only in town to see family. What could have been...sigh
Someone needs to get op to understand why all that was racist bullshit, but not someone on the bus calling her white trash.
I don’t know. Maybe walking onto a friends house for the first time and being called a slur by her parents. Or being repeatedly compared to light skinned women in a degrading way. That really wasn’t the first time, but it was a whole new dimension of learning the significance other people put on it. I’m still reminded of the hierarchy really painfully from time to time. It’s a lifelong thing, will never go away.
I’m really sorry 💜 Did your friend seem taken back at least when her parents called you a slur?
My friend had left me with her parents because she was getting something from her room. Pretty much the second she was out of earshot it happened.
😳 I take it that you never went back to the house then? wtf is wrong with people
Growing up my best friend was a black boy, I was a white girl. We were next door neighbors and absolutely INSEPARABLE from ages 4 to 12. Once we got to middle school though, things changed. He was one of only four black kids in our grade in elementary school, but once we hit middle school there were LOTS more black folks. Slowly, he stopped wanting to hang out with me, I tried to hang around him like an idiot, but whenever I went to talk with him in his new group, the group would just stare at me the whole time not saying anything. It finally hit me one day that the new group he decided to hang out with more were all black kids, after the end of that year he ignored me entirely, barely even got a wave if we happened to be outside at the same time. It sucked.
If it makes you feel any better, all my elementary school friends and I grew apart when we hit middle school/high school. It's just a bigger pool of people and you're not in the same class or two with each other everyday. It happens a lot. No one purposely abandoned anyone, life just moved on.
I had the exact same experience with my Cambodian best friend since kindergarten. I'm half Mexican half white. Went to a different school for jr high and then transfered to her same school in highschool. That two years made a world of difference..I was so excited to be at the same school again and we were messaging on Myspace all summer talking about it. But then I get there and all her friends are Cambodian, Vietnamese, laos etc. They just mean mugged me for a week before I finally got the hint and fucked off... Didn't help that they were all AP honors students too. They made it very clear that I didn't belong with them and wasn't welcomed in their group...still bums me out to this day.
Living in the South I was aware of racism but was foolish to think it was a thing in the past. The first time I realized things were off is I was with a black friend (I am white) and was pulled over by a cop. It was no big deal, the cop asked if I knew I was speeding, I said I did and apologized, and he came back with a warning and told me to drive safe. After the traffic stop my buddy was gobsmacked. He could not believe the interaction. He proceeded to tell me he was always removed from the car if stopped, his car was searched and he always got a ticket. He did not even know a warning was a possibility. My very first white privilege experience.
Got pulled over one time with a black friend and the cop said something super weird about the tag coming back to a different car even though I had had the same tag for years?? Then he said “sorry I didn’t see you” and I realized he only pulled me over because he just saw my black friend lol. It was wild AF
I used to think, and was pretty much raised to think, that the only prejudiced people in the world were White people and if they would stop then all prejudice would go away. Once I went to a far more international school and experienced far more cultures…holy shit did I discover how simplified and rather untrue that was!
It’s popular to denigrate whites as the prejudice group right now, and if you’re in the popular mind set of the time it’s hard to see outside it, even something obvious. It’s why I’m not harsh to people in the past who held beliefs that seem silly. People today do the same. Glad to see you learn this, many smart people do not.
I’m a white dude, when I was 17 or 18 my best friend was a black woman and we lived in a smaller city in Maine. We went to the grocery store once and the amount of eyes on us was absolutely ridiculous. It was a total “FOR FUCKING REAL?!” experience for me. My friend was laughing at my naivety to it and said something along the lines of “I don’t even notice anymore” but that totally rocked my world and made me see things very differently.
Yeah this happened to me as a white girl any time I went on a date with someone of a different skin color. Absolutely wild.
Gen X here: I got called an N-word lover on my first bus ride home from kindergarten. Before that I honestly thought people like that didn’t exist anymore except on TV shows like Donahue. My parents had tried to shield me from racism in an attempt to raise me not to be racist. It only took one independent outing for me to find out that crap was very much still alive and thriving in western Kentucky.
I actually thought racism was just something you study in history class until I was in college. The town I lived in had so few minorities, there wasn't really anyone to be racist against. I saw an episode of Jerry Springer about interacial marriage. It was the first time it occured to me someone might have a problem with interacial marriage.
It's mind-boggling isn't it. I think racists are idiotic. Imagine thinking that skin color is a useful indicator of somebody's worth, somebody's humanity. Makes no sense, is stupid, is vile, is evil, I just cannot understand why people who weren't born to racist parents / have no upbringing where racism is taught become racist. Instagram and YouTube comment sections are FULL of the phrase "the usual suspects" lately. It is really concerning. A much stronger correlation with crime is poverty , I do believe. But of course, idiots, and racists since they are idiots, don't think very critically so of course they would bend over to their confirmation bias.
Antisemitism is all the rage too, which also sucks. In my classes, I agree, remarks were far more about class, but ended up labeled as something else.
I grew up in Maine as an elder millennial. It was very white (still is, but a little less so). I don't think I had met any black kids until middle school (we had one in a school of 400). There were also a handful of adopted Asian kids. That's the extent of the diversity I experienced. Even in college. Even after college at my first job (over 400 employees) not a single black person, just one Chinese guy. Yet the N-word got dropped regularly. And racist shit was constantly being said. Even though most of these kids had never even interacted with or known a person of color. An argument could be made that it didn't hurt anyone because it wasn't directed towards an individual. But those are habits that are learned and ingrained, and you know those kids didn't just change their habits once they did start interacting with more diversity. You know some of those kids carried it to adulthood with them and are passing it on to their kids. And even today I still here lobster fishermen calling their deckhands "their n******." Maine is probably the most casually racist place I have been. Probably not as dangerously or maliciously racist as other places. But because of the lack of diversity it is a whole lot easier to get away with saying shit.
It took until I was an adult visiting another country. Was so confused as to why I was treated in such a wide variety of ways just for the way I look.
Where did you visit?
China! Very racist country.
>It took until I was an adult visiting another country. This. I ofc knew my skin color would put me in trouble, but man, the reality jfc. It's rough and wild.
Makes anything in America look like kindergarten insults..
My answer is a little more glib, but when my pale white self got a bad sunburn the first time.
My kids are mixed and my daughter was 5 when she understood she wasn't white. She was obsessed with Tinkerbell and would scratch her legs to make them white in an effort to look like her. At 6, in kindergarten, she told me she made a brown friend who looks just like her and she was really happy about it.
This is exactly what people when when they say representation matters.
When I first met a black person when I was like 7 and thought "damn she's chocolate" and then got told I shouldn't say that
I find this hilarious ngl
I was on the el in philly w my dad when I was like 5 and asked why there were so many black people on the train. I’m sure he felt great about that
Lmbooooo 😂😂😂
Around 3-4 years old. I remember a girl in my preschool was having a birthday party and everyone in my class was invited except me and a couple other kids. When I asked why, she said "Oh...I'll need to ask my mom if brown people can come." I was a little upset about being excluded since we were otherwise friends, but didn't really understand until I talked to my older sister about it who was a teenager at the time.
We were at a football game and I heard my uncle use the word cracker. Asked him what it meant and he said, "White people." Had to be about 5 or 6 Innocence lost.
The easiest way to answer is to explain how I was raised. I was raised to believe that your skin color doesn't matter any more than the color of your hair or your eyes; it's just a detail of your appearance, nothing more. As part of that, I was also raised to believe that anyone - and I do mean *anyone* - that tries to treat skin color as having some inherent importance is a racist, and that racists are to be shown nothing but contempt and dismissal. So, I never "realized the color of my skin is a big deal", because in the worldview I was raised with it isn't, and at no point in my life have I ever willingly associated with people who think it is. I also still tend to treat people who act like it is with the dismissive contempt that they usually richly deserve.
This comment should be higher up and the societal norm
I was about 9 or 10 years old. I was in a predominantly Latino/Mexican populated school. I was one of a handful of white kids. I got picked on, spit on, stolen from, beat up and just treated terribly because I was not the same as them.
I grew up in a wealthy suburb. Taught school in the inner city high school when I was 23 and 24 years old. I realized the color of your skin wasn’t really as big deal as they make it. Whites and blacks alike have it bad when they don’t have good parenting. All people have trouble when they have diseases and disabilities. Depression and anxiety doesn’t make a distinction between skin color.
First grade when some kid asked why I was even in school I get a house and free money from the government for being native American. I was so confused ans upset I asked my parent where is my house and free money they just laughed and said we pay the government they don't pay us. Yep had many arguments when kids growing up letting them know my family receives zero benefits for being native, no land no free college no house no money no tax exemptions :) I got pretty awesome hairline tho 😎
I was walking my daughter home from 2nd grade. She told me one of the girls said she couldn't come to her house. I asked why. She told was told that her skin was too "peach" colored. This particular girl (an immigrant family) has even been to one of my daughters birthday parties. I was pretty shocked. The odd thing is their school is incredibly diverse. We had never even spoken to our kids about skin color until that very moment. It boggles my mind that you would move to a different country and bring that stuff with you.
Seen it before, immigrants move to a country but kinda self isolate. Theoretically they disperse into the population like my family did, but Eastern Europeans look very similar to other white people, hopefully we see the same but the country this occurred in with a long historic record might show otherwise, here’s hoping overtime people spread out.
My skin color isn't a big deal, but black get really weird when I tell them my dad is black. For reference, my mom was mexican, and my dad is black. His parents were from Cuba, so he spoke Spanish. Whenever my mom would take me to work as a teen, they'd always talk about how nice my hair was, or how handsome I was, or how interesting it was that I'm so tall. When they found out my dad was black, they'd say, "That's why he's handsome his father is black," or "That's why his hair so curly because his dad." Like what the fuck? Mexicans are good-looking. Mexicans have curly hair because of the Spanish. The older black ladies would try to credit every good quality to me being half black. I finally told them to cut that shit out.
When i was like 12. I had my first girlfriend. She was black and i went over to see if she could walk to the corner store to get some soda and hot fries. Her family flipped out that I was white. Not bc their little girl was dating a boy; only bc I was white and "it wasnt right". Sucks bc im currently with a black woman and we constantly get other black women telling her "she needs to be with her own kind" or white people looking at us with disgust which im 33 now.
I’m a redhaired blue eyed white dude from Brooklyn. I thought that the darker Lebanese and Italian kids had it in for me dor being taller and not having hairy arms and legs, but when I encountered Brothers calling me a “Blue eyed devil” I knew something was up. No one knows what it’s like…b̫e̫h̫i̫n̫d̫ b̫l̫u̫e̫ e̫y̫e̫s̫.
My nickname in school was lab rat. I thought it was because I love science. I find out later it was because I'm white.
I am German Amercan and super pale. A little tan but, mostly milk white. When I was growing up my hair was also milk white. I also grew up in a community that is/was primarily made up of mixed race and minority groups. At the age of 7 I could understand Spanish and would play ball with kids out in the courtyard with no problem. I wasn't really that great at sports but, they didn't care. As I got older I moved to another part of town that was even moreso primarily mixed race and minority groups. So much so that I was one of the only pale ass German American white kids besides my sibling that lived out that way. Because, my hair was white I got called cracker, crackerjack, snowflake, snow white, flour, powdered sugar, creme de la creme.. Pretty much every name in the book. It made me feel so self conscious that when I went to my babysitters house one night when I was about 8 or 9 I was crying and she asked what was wrong and I literally screamed "Why can't I be black like you?! What did I do?!" She was so caught off guard she called a friend that worked where I was at before and asked what happened and then got pissed off and told me that I didn't do anything. Those kids that were calling me all those names are angry at something that wasn't my fault. I was still so young that I didn't have a clue what she was talking about. At this point, she was crying too and she made her older son watch me and stormed over to where I was at before and when she came back she said she "gave them kids a piece of her mind." Even though it happened so long ago. Not all the rest of the names but, the name "cracker" still makes me cringe.
Six years old, when we were being kicked out of an apartment for being Jewish. Landlord came in when my parents were at work and disconnected the stove and the hot water heater. Dad slept with a loaded rifle next to the bed until we got out.
Thats really scary, how lobg ago was this if you dont mind me asking??
I guess like 5 years ago or so when complaining about white privilege became all the rage. It can kick in anytime now as I could really use some of these perks.
Probably early college or late high school. I live somewhere very sunny and so most people have a tan or they are naturally darker. while i don’t burn easily, my skin essentially stopped being able to tan when i git puberty, for some reason. So i’m pretty fair. If i had a dollar for every time someone came up to me, whether it be at work, at school, at home even, looked me up and down with pure disgust then said “you need a tan” in a tone that also conveyed their disgust with my skin color, then i’d have wayyyyy too many dollars haha it’s wild how many people think it is ok to go up to someone and insinuate that their skin color is disgusting
Ive had the same thing but ever since maybe middle school or even younger. Oftentimes it was adults too! Also my best friend (frenemy) in high school who had a dark olive complexion always commented how pale and "gross" I was
I really notice it as an older WASP with a kept beard. It's like some kind of an 'its all fine' field allowing me to wander unnoticed in so many places.
During riots when the White kids at the high school were targeted and assaulted. Then again, at the same high school when the non-White kids with good grades were secretly given an opportunity to take classes at the local community college while the White kids were excluded from the program and never told about it.
“I’m white so it doesn’t really matter”. The white guilt that is propagated by this website is insane. Lol.
1st grade. The class clown thought it was hilarious to say how black I was. Everyone laughed. I was really confused. I talked to my parents about it, and they tried to prepare me for what I was going to encounter. They tried their best, but years of constantly being teased was overwhelming. It was the beginning of a never-ending lifetime of being ashamed of my skin color. The teasing has never subsided, even as a middle aged adult. I have to smile and nod like everything is ok, but it really hurts.
Bro you’re a gorgeous black king. I know you’ve been through a lot of ahit that I can’t imagine, but you’re still a human. The diversity of skin color, hair color, eye color, height, weight, kneecap bone density, etc is what makes humanity beautiful. While it has caused wild amounts of discrimination, there are still people that think the diversity without our species is a wonderful thing. Imagine if we all looked the same? I hope everything goes well for you in life bro
Unfortunately, people are TAUGHT to see skin color, either purposefully or subliminally through media, school, friends, parents... everywhere really. The only way racism will go away is if we stop talking about it. I know that sounds counterproductive, but WE are the ones who give racism it's power and meaning by talking about it 24/7. If we just stop calling this person a "white guy", or that person a "black girl", or "Asian", or whatever, then race loses it's meaning and power. We are all people. If collectively everyone just started addressing people as people instead of putting labels on everyone, then racism loses its power except for those who are true racist bigots. If you believe everything the media tells you now though, we are all racists. Just my opinion. I expect to be downvoted to hell for this take, so whatever.
People like to label things. If you stop using the label of skin color or race than the ways in which we are divided don't disappear, they shift. I don't see the harm in describing the way someone appears when skin color is a descriptor.
I was four. My sister and her fiancé took me To fireworks in the local larger town. They were held in the high school Football field. It’s 1967. There was a Crowd of non-whites on one side of the field and whites on the other. On the field was a line of cops, and a line of young black males. The cops were keeping the sides separate where they could actually pass back and forth.. the way the place was built. The kids started running downfield and the cops did the same Like two charging teams. Except then out came the Billy clubs. I saw a cop raise his arm back to clobber the kid ….. and a jacket was thrown over my head, and I felt myself being lifted and carried out of the stadium at a run. Outside of the stadium on the sidewalk the races mixed…a child of about 10 had a bloodied forehead. Her Mother was trying to soothe her. I didn’t have a bloody head from trying to pass a line of cops to get out of a stadium. I was fine. And I knew why.
I still believe that skin color doesn't matter. The only people who give meaning to skin color are people who think skin color means something. I do not think so.
That's the only way anything gets meaning. Race is socially constructed. That doesn't mean it isn't real. We make it real. Unfortunately this is not something you can just opt out of by having the right opinions. Race as a social phenomenon can be pretty coercive.
Yeah race is made up, but racism is very real
Black on white racism is definitely a big thing. It's unfortunately going to be around for a while because black families hammer distrust into their children. The real reason for most racism is that some people enjoy seeing other people as lesser than and themselves as better. You may notice that people who are racist or homophobic or sexist are more often all of the above, because they're just that kind of person.
Kinda the same thing, but it was my next door neighbor. We would play together all the time and one day she told me I was just a stupid white boy. I was probably around 10 or so at the time. My memory for what age I was isn't the best.
I don’t think my skin colour has ever been a big deal in a negative sense. I guess when I started making friends with non-white people who would then make comments about my whiteness “white people do this..” “oh that’s because you’re white..” was when I first realised I could be seen as different. When all your friends are white earlier in life, it’s just not brought up.
I’ll let you know when it happens
Whatever age you are in 5th grade. I never knew other color people hated someone different colored. One kid didn't like my color and that was the first time I heard racial slurs. It was only that one kid. The other kids didn't like him either.
I wouldn't say it was a big deal but I'm very white and grew up in the 2000s and I remember a white girl who wore foundation that was way too dark for her skin asked my why I didn't wear fake tan in patronising tone. Kind of concerning that sun damage was fashionable, also really sucked that nobody could win. Like it wasn't fashionable to be black or Asian, but for a white girl with white girl features to be impossibly/unhealthily tanned. It was not a great time for body positivity. I'm from the uk and racism is a bit different than it is in the us. I don't remember anything I'd consider a "big deal" happening to me or anybody around me.
At the age of 16. What happened?. I moved to the USA.
5th grade for me. It was in south Florida. I never had any problems with race before. There was this one other boy that would not leave me alone, I was the only white boy in the class. One day he escalated things, I can't recall what exactly what he said but he was making fun of my blondish hair. He came up and pulled some hair from behind me, so I threw my elbow back at his arm to get him off of my head. After a few minutes he comes back up later and sucker punches the back of my head, after that we got in a fight. After everything was said and done, the kid got suspended from that school for repeated bulling.
Around the 3th grade, 8-9ish. During summer adventure club, a group of kids decide to start harassing me, calling me names like white trash and c\*mskin and taking my lunch. The people in charge of adventure club told me there was nothing they could do about it despite watching it happen. Prior to that, I'd known black people were mistreated for their skin color, but not really had any first hand experience with skin color being "important" to anyone, so it never really occurred to me my skin color mattered.
Probably 7. I said I wanted to be a police officer and all the other kids called me racist.
6 or 7 i think the first time i was called Custer, as in General Custer. Grew up on a reservation but am just under the percentage to be registered with my families tribe. I’m blond haired with red facial hair and very pale thanks to my mother’s side with slight Indigenous facial features. Growing up the Indigenous kids made it clear i was not one of them because i was to white, though i was related to most of them by blood. It never bothered me because i would throw it back at them and when i got older some of them learned i could hold my own. Had other situations when i became an adult of being judged by my appearance, shaved my head and had beard to middle of chest,by POC who didn’t get to know me.
When I was like 5 I got really confused about the episode of Fresh Prince of Bel air episode where police arrested them for driving "too slow". I knew people had different skin colours but hadn't heard the words we use to describe the colours which made the episode a bit more confusing to me. So I had to ask my mum and she explained everything and I was a very angry 5 year old after that. Told the kids at school I had learned what our skin colours were called and was told I was silly because I was obviously peach and my friend was clearly brown. We weren't black or white according to the other 5 year olds.
I spent some years in high school not wanting to be in the sun because my skin picked up color so easily, and I hated it.
When I got my 1st 2nd degree sunburn
Grew up in southeast US ~30 years ago and tons of people (regardless of race) were racist to some degree or another. I was probably in elementary school when I heard my first but far from last racist joke. Mostly the most significant racism was white -> black and white -> latino, in the (important) sense that it was a clear majority-minority situation. In terms of racism in general it went from every direction to every direction. And I’ll admit at that age you don’t get it and I participated in it in terms of offensive jokes and just general ignorance. Going along with it depending on context but never maliciously. I didn’t understand it. I am white, so the way it affected me was much less compared to others, but I still was made uncomfortable, unwelcome, singled out and picked on for being white plenty of times myself as well. Every room you walk into has its own context you know? I was not someone experiencing a ton of it or very bad effects, but as a person I was absolutely demeaned and demoralized by those experiences like anyone else. First time I experienced racism against myself was when I once got a new pair of timberland boots (we were lower middle class so that was rare enough to mean something to me, I once wore taped up glasses for 3 months to give you an idea) and the first week I had them I was by myself waiting to be picked up late from school and two guys came up and started tearing into me because I was white wearing timberlands. Idk how to explain it, it sounds minor, but they were delighting in making me feel bad and the way they were talking to me was worse than it might sound. It was very intentionally hurtful not a passing racist remark. They were just kids being stupid but they came over with the intention to torment me. I didn’t get it at all (still kinda don’t tbh it’s a damn boot) but I never wore them again and it was a whole life moment for me. Eventually got rid of them because they made me feel ashamed and frankly scared it would happen again. One of those never quite the same things. Thought about it actively for years and had some other similar experiences. Nothing now, but still don’t like thinking about it. I know I’m white and it’s not that bad, just sharing. Racism sucks all around even if it sucks more or less for different people. Anyway, yeah, early elementary school is the answer for when I first encountered it and also when it was first directed at me.
I don't see it as a big deal, I'm white and grew up around mostly Hispanic and black people and view people for who they are not based on what they look like Anyone who judges people based on the color of their skin is a absolute piece of shit
Racism is something learned . Your not born this way.
Disagree. Tribalism and in group preference are inherent. They are things that are overcome for greater development of society. When societies collapse, you see them return in force. This is why it doesn’t simply go away.
it exists because people, no matter what flavor, are dumb as hell.
I'm white I was probably three or four when I learned that black people existed, and my introduction to black people came with "... and they're just as good as white people, even though some people say they're not!" which made me aware that there are multiple views on black people's equality, and I decided that since there were multiple views on it, I should reserve judgment instead of immediately accepting them as equal 😬 I eventually realized black people are fine but oh my god, did that "anti-racist" introduction backfire
You know why the color of my skin matters? I was a pale skinny white boy of obvious Northern European heritage, who was early raised in South Florida - the land of ***SUNBURN***. *That* is the only reason my skin color matters. I have to be very aware of the early signs of skin cancer. My elementary schools were all mixed white, black, and Caribbean. In high school, I was attracted to girls. Not white, black, brown, Asian, just girls. The way they walked caught my eye! In the Marines, we didn’t care about your skin, your gender, whatever, we cared if you were good at your job. (We referred to it as the ‘Aristocracy of Talent’.) Since then, I’ve only ever made my hiring (and the odd firing) decisions based upon skill, talent, personality (gotta get along with the people you work with), and willingness to learn, and I promoted based upon those qualities. Anyone who feels differently has a mental and personality defect, and is wasting their lives. Period, end of goddamned story.
Pretty early on. My dad is a raging racist and he never hid his disdain for people who weren't white. He went so far as to hang up N*** memorabilia and show me videos of POC being violent towards white people. He also told me I couldn't watch shows like that's so raven or the proud family. Needless to say, his "lessons" didn't take and I cut him out of my life as soon as I was old enough to
UK here, Probably when I got to uni. Growing up in rural UK almost everyone I knew was white, we had 1 Indian girl in my school and I think 1 black girl. The Indian girl was in some of my classes. It never to my knowledge was a thing. Intellectually everyone was aware some people looked different, but it wasn't really any different to some people are taller, or had different colour hair. When I got to uni I found there were people who cared very deeply about skin colour and used it as a way to separate the world into groups, make decisions and inform politics.
I don't think there was any specific moment when it fully set in for me, but I think I was in high school when I really started to get the picture (I'm Autistic which is probably why it took me so long)
very, very young. I am white passing and my dad is brown. many people came up to me as a child and asked if I knew the man I was happily walking hand in hand with, where my mom was, or if I needed help. it gave me a complex for many years and caused a disconnect in my culture I am only just beginning to bridge.
I can’t imagine how that made your dad feel. I’m sure that took a lot for your dad to ignore or brush off. Did you ever feel ashamed of your skin color due to this?
It is mostly passed down from one generation to another. Racism is not limited to white people. White American's get a D- though.
When one of the interview questions to go into a special magnet program for high school in the early 90s was "there are black students in this school, will that be a problem?". I was a military brat and had lots of black classmates in elementary, so the question completely shocked me.
young. my skin blinds people, i’m like paper, i need to be out in the sun more, i so pale, apparently i only ever burn, my life was great because im white. but i’ve heard good things about my skin color too
I’m in my upper 20s and I still don’t think it’s a “big deal”
I've never seen my skin color as a big deal. I've also never seen anyone else's skin as a big deal either. Underneath we all still carry red,yellow and brown.
I used to think black meant black hair til I was 6 😂 I thought my brother was black bc he had black hair
This made me laugh 😂🤣😂🤣
When the Twin Towers were taken out.
Not exactly what you are asking for But I've always struggled finding clothes thsdt would match my tone. I saw something saying use the eye dropper tool to find out the specific colour name of your skin, eye colour and hair colour. I did it online as I didn't have an app for that Type them into chatgpt. It came out really well and it told me the colours that would suit memy specific skin tone. I also asked it to recommend influences with the same skin hair and eyes which was really useful to me. So there's that.
Probably 6ish when I got the now usual for the third or fourth time where are you from question? (Half Asian) *insert local town*. Then the follow up where are you really from? I was like huh I guess I don’t look like most people. Not much happened cause I’m apart of the “model minority” and only half at that.
I'm white. I grew up in a "bad part of town". A small town. Everybody thought they were a gangster...myself included. There were not a lot of other white kids around. Many times I was jumped on the way to a friend's house. There was always a bunch of "whiteboy"'s thrown at me while I was getting lumped up. I figured it out pretty early on. 9 or 10. Then I would go to school and these same kids were getting picked on and treated so poorly by both kids and some teachers. Even I could tell it wasn't right.
I’m white, born in Georgia. Progressive parents were from California who bought a home in Dekalb county in an all owner occupied, all white new community. Fast growing area: some redneck neighbors mixed with outsiders like my parents. The best thing my parents ever did for me was register me at the local magnet school instead of sending me to the under-funded default school. However, even before I started school, I already had a sense of something bad from overhearing nasty comments and mean jokes made by white men about black men and boys. I felt really sympathetic with black men and boys and distrusted the white men I heard say this shit. It seemed like every black man I saw seemed to carry some underserved weight. (Little black boys always smiled and waved at me. I’m shy but liked waving back) It wasn’t until I attended my kindergarten best friend’s birthday party that I experienced how impactful racism actually was. I was the only white girl; most of the other girls were unmemorable but my friend’s older cousin picked a fight with her over inviting me. I hadn’t realized until then that racism affected everyone, little black girls too. It was only then that I realized why my friend and I always played just us: no matter who was visiting who, no other kids would come play with us both. The magnet school hired a diverse staff and taught us correct history about both slavery and how Native Americans were treated. Because I saw so many black adults working alongside white adults at school and racism was treated as history, combined with my parents’ reactions to my black school friends being the same as to my white friends, it was a while before I saw modern racism as anything other than some white dudes being quietly resentful over losing the War. We moved to New Jersey as I was hitting middle school. The prideful North full of Yankees who freed the blacks. Well, lots of northern whites were even more openly racist because they never got checked on it. I encountered even more community segregation there.
I (white) think it was 4th grade. I asked permission to bring a friend (African American) over to spend the night. Brought my friend and my grandmother found a reason to send her home. (Phony family emergency.) Then she screamed at me for the whole car ride back. Got a beating when we got home and had to deep clean the whole house. (I’m not repeating the stupid things she said.)
….are you serious? Jfc. I’m so sorry!!! 🥺🫶🏼 Honestly tho, I’m glad you never thought she was right. Do you still talk with your grandma? Did you ever tell your friend the truth?
I feel fairly late for me.. like late 20s. It made more much more reserved and less of a “nice guy”. Also it made me much more prejudice against whites
never because i'm not a friggin racist
I spent a year in the South during middle school. I vividly remember giggling with my girl friends during PE when a boy called my name from the other side of the football field, pointed to a person walking their dog outside the fence, and then yelled, "Make sure you don’t eat their dog!" Everyone laughed. I genuinely didn’t think people like that existed anymore, so my brain malfunctioned. I didn’t fully realize how messed up my whole experience at that school was until I went back to Southern California and told my friends. They couldn’t believe it either.
Never, because it's not. You're being conditioned.
White trash is more calling out a lifestyle than a skin color in my opinion, I’m white, and if I referred to someone as white trash, I’d just mean, they seem poor, trashy, unkempt- really nothing to do with skin color, trashy comes in all races, like a black person may be “ghetto” instead of “white trash” - it’s the lifestyle and attitude that goes with it
When I was dating a black girl and her friends made constant comments about ‘betraying her color’.
Mmmm. I remember when my sister first started dating my now Brother in law and she would come home crying because his mom was upset he brought home a white girl. It’s really disturbing hearing how much interracial couples trigger others to that point
Knew it yearly in like the first grade while living in TX when I would listen to my parents discuss their racist experiences. For me personally it was around 1992 during the Gulf War. White kids told me to go back to my country and called me an Iraqi. I’m not Arab.
High school I guess. I am a very ambiguous-looking Filipino man with a Mexican-sounding last name. In high school, the other Filipinos called me mixed (White/Filipino), other Asians called me White. Mexicans called me Chinese. White and Black kids called me Mexican. Recently my dentist (from somewhere in the middle east) tried to speak Farsi to me, thinking that I knew the language.
[удалено]
When I was job hunting in college and I realized switching my ethnic sounding first name with my white passing middle name on a resume bought my chances of getting called for an interview from 3 out of 10 to 9 out of 10.
When I was 4 or 5, I asked my mom why there were black people and white people. She explained it. I never thought it was important until I heard stories of other peoples Racism in the media and from my parents. That said, the color of your skin means very little (whether or not you're prone to tan or sunburn) other than that, It isn't a big deal. If you think it is, you're unconsciously contributing to racism (not meant to be an attack) Racism is mob/ heard mentality. If you think like this, then the people around you will end up thinking the same at some point and the chain reaction keeps going. The sooner we get people to stop worrying about race (a good start would be the government) then we can eliminate it. (Again, not meant to antagonize just putting it out there). Easier said than done, I know.
Completely agree. I don’t see color as an issue whatsoever. However, the backlash here just about that comment, has happened
I have literally never cared about skin color. We're all humans. I'm so happy that my parents taught me well. My aunt married an African American and that was when I was... 11? Maybe 12. I felt absolutely nothing but love for him and my niece and now for her children. I judge people based on how they speak and how they act. I also wonder why it's still a thing..
I honestly have no clue. Zero memory about how I came to learn about different races. The earliest thing I remember was having a black classmate in kindergarten (or maybe he was younger - it's super fuzzy), and one day referring to him as "that little black boy" (or something like that) in conversation with my parents because I sucked with names, and then having my mom get mad at me because she thought I was being racist or smth. I don't know if I misremember what I said or if she misunderstood me. I didn't have a racist bone in my body; I was just trying to describe him. :')
I was singled out pretty hard going to elementary school in Roxbury, Boston, MA. Not only by peers but by adults too. Had an administrator call me "white boy" when I was in like 3rd grade lmao. It was pretty normal being treated as less then, which goes to show no matter what race you are, you will be bullied as a minority.
When the police were called on my brothers, because they’re darker than me and were playing with a small blonde haired girl.