Ask Lemmy

I lived on Long Island and was in 3rd or 4th grade. I was invited to a friend's house to play and right before I entered the door, the dad stuck his leg out and blocked me from coming in.

He bent down and looked squared in the eye and asked "Where you from, kid?"

Ummm.... "Taiwan, sir"

He quickly smiled and said "alright, I did some RNR there. You good people".

I later found out that he doesn't let anyone from Vietnam in the house.

I luckily don't have any major incidents but a couple stick out in my memory.

First time I realized an encounter was racist was my first time at a summer camp in the US around age 12.

I went with a friend to line up for the showers in the morning and it was just us two and another kid. I barely noticed he was there cause I was caught up in conversation. Not long later some other kids walk in and the waiting kid just blurts out in relief "Thank god, I was the only white guy here!" And even in my innocent, privileged little 12 year old brain I knew that was kind of fucked up.

Also had a South African girl break up with me as a teen cause her parents literally cited my nationality as an issue... While they were living in my country...

I'm a waitress, used to have this amazing young busser I worked with named Beni. Beni was as American as apple pie, but like apple pie, originated somewhere that French is spoken.

One breakfast shift this woman comes up to me. The place is empty, she's the last table before we close to flip the dining room for lunch. She looks around and hands me her tab in cash, saying "I didn't want to leave it on the table," in just north of a whisper.

Beni walks out of our server station behind me and her eyes get just a little bit wider. I calmly turn to Beni, hand him the cash, and say, hey Beni, can you hold this for me? then turn back to the guest and explain, very slowly and patiently, that in the future it's perfectly acceptable to leave her cash on the table if she doesn't want change because we're all professionals and work as a team. It would not be an exaggeration to describe her departure as "scurrying away".

I turned back to Beni and rolled my eyes. He just shrugged. I doubt it was the first time someone has acted like that towards him.

I'm a person of colour who has a white step parent and has grown up in Canada in a fairly mixed area.

My family history would have started in India but my parents were born in South America and migrated up to North America (both Canada and the US) where my sister and I were born. I grew up "white." My voice, appearance and behaviour are "white." I was born and raised Canadian. I'm far from proud of this country where I have spent my life but I will identify myself as a Canadian. My family history had been thoroughly white washed and erased.

I say all this because for all this history I have behind me, it means nothing to most people.

The majority of Indian people here will look at me one way until I speak and then promptly ignore me because I'm not "Indian."

West Indian people want to be my best friend until they find out I've never visited any West Indian country. Then I'll be treated as an idiot for not embracing a culture I have no real knowledge of and have not been immersed in.

Then there are the white people... No matter how white I act, I will never be "white" enough. I'll always be the colour of my skin. I could look, act and behave as awful as a white cop and still not be on the same level.

In fact, I have a "friend" who is a cop. He's not really my friend, more of an acquaintance I've known for 10+ years through another more decent friend. This guy is just fucking awful and every molecule in his body is racist and vile. He looks at me, arms full of tattoos and tells me I'd be a perfect "UC." Undercover Cop. My only value to him is to be used to incriminate fellow people of colour. I'm just not a person or anything close to equal. Always something less.

I've never really had a place where I felt I belonged while growing up. Hated for being me from multiple angles for reasons beyond my control while doing nothing harmful to anyone. There are good people out there who treat me as a person first but they are few and far between.

Another quick story, I once had a Dutch guy in Australia tell me that his last name Hoffmeister means "House Master." You know, from the times when they used to own slaves. Thanks for telling me that to my face, you absolute weirdo.

Everywhere I go they ask me where I am from , when I tell country of my birth and whwre I was raised, they say but what is your origin? They want to hear the nationality of my parent because my skin does not look white enough, THIS IS THE SITUATION IN FRANCE, even if you are fluent in French but does not look white they will ask you whats your origin. FU K EM

My experiences are usually either secondhand or from assholes who assume I'm safe to be racist around.

My Korean partner and I were traveling and met a business associate of hers who happened to live in the area. The associate brought her fiance. The fiance managed to complain about immigrants 3 times within the first ten minutes. I felt like I couldn't make a scene because it might impact my partner's work life so I just did my best to make it obvious that was not a welcome topic and then freeze him out of the conversation. He didn't pick up on it, either because he is an idiot or an asshole, probably both. This was in rural Colorado.

My partner has also gotten pulled over several times driving through Texas for being the wrong color. Instead of being able to remain in her vehicle, she was told she had to sit in the back of the police vehicle while they ran her plates or whatever excuse they had.

And there's always the "Where are you from? No, I mean where are you from?" questions.

The fetishizing of Asians also gets pretty gross, but I'd rather leave that one to the imagination.

She is adopted and has a white family that are Trump supporters. She gets used by them to say they couldn't possibly be racist, like that guy who has a black friend. Meanwhile, they call an apartment complex that has a lot of minorities living in it "the zoo." They also claim to be colorblind, which really made them dismissive to the issues my partner faced growing up in a predominately white town as well as more recent problems like the wave of anti Asian sentiment during around covid. Any disagreement with the family is an attack on them, so there's no hope there.

Her name is also very white sounding. People can get surprised if they've spoken to her via phone or online and then get introduced to her in real life.

Racism can be subtle. Thankfully my partner's found good, supportive spaces as well.

Adoption in general is a complicated issue. My family adopted a boy from South America after I had left the nest. That always gave me "white man's burden" vibes.

I am white looking, but my parents are Jewish and Japanese. Basically every time I tell someone I'm Jewish (culturally, I am an atheist nowadays) it completely changes how people interact with me. The best I can hope for is being the "token Jewish friend" most of the time, but I've been treated to racial slurs and even physical violence. In middle school, the rich son of the local pastor called me a kike and I broke his nose for it. I was suspended from school and he was treated like a victim. Looking back on it, that might have been the beginning of my radicalization.

I was taking a walk last week and a car of white guys screamed "N*gger" at me, so that was fun. And have been to Japan, which was racism on steroids (for black people anyway).

Swastikas painted on our house when I was a kid.

Kids yell in the public park tell me that I have to go back. When pushing my son in a stroller.

Getting told that I will have to pay for stuff when I pick it up at the store at Dollywood, like I don't know how a merchant economy works.

Had to fight a lot in the feral public school system growing up. All the ching chong jokes.

Being referred to as "chowie" by a prominent basketball scout while in high school.

Being asked if I eat dogs by my boss. In 2023.

Being asked if my mom was an Asian whore by another boss. In 2018.

Being told that I'm not Asian and that some white girl looks more Asian than me and how can I even claim to be Asian when I don't have squinty eyes?

Jokes about my ancestry when they can't place me.

Being pulled into secondary every time I travel through Paris CDG because I always get flagged. And one Securitas security officer telling me that Americans will never accept me as American when I finished.

Dating scene as a teen, everything going well, then meeting the parents, then being told I wasn't allowed to date their white daughter anymore. Like clockwork. Which is fine, they can't handle the spice in my food anyway.

I'll start by saying my skin is really pale. Like, ginger "burn after 5 minutes in the sun"-white. Thus I don't personally experience racism often (although of course I do notice it around me a lot, because fuck are there many racists), nor do I think it's even comparable to how bad it is for other people. But this one time caught me so off guard, because this woman actually thought she was giving me a compliment and she had no idea how fucked up it sounded.

One of my parents is white, the other is mixed. That side of the family has roots in Suriname. When I told one of my colleagues about it, she told me "wow, then you really got lucky with your skin color!" Like wtf? And here I am, always jealous of my sibling, who can actually walk in the sun without burning up like a vampire.

I often wondered if I was making too big a deal out of it, because it pissed me off. I called her a racist and never talked to her again. Luckily I don't work with her anymore.

Not directed at myself.

But at the first family gathering at our own house my friend had told some tales of his work at some immigrant center and my father in law started on some racist diatribe about "those people". Before he could get too far I loudly threatened to throw him out of my house if he continued with that shit. Felt good.

I'm half hispanic/white. I grew up with my Mexican family and spent most summers in Mexico visiting family. I'm fluent in spanish and mostly identify culturally with my Mexican side. But my dad was a very white guy from northeast Texas, so I look very white.

While in college, I found myself serving and eventually bartending at a popular Colombian restaurant/club. I got called a lot of nasty things by Latino folks who assumed I was appropriating their culture or thought I was mocking them. I've also had Latino folks talk shit about me in spanish in front of me - assuming I didn't understand.

I often find myself playing it down or pretending I don't know spanish so as not to upset people. It has to be a conscious decision because it's very different from how I talk with my family.

Wish I had some cool, "I showed them" story, but I was always frustrated and hurt in those situations. It's like all of my upbringing, experiences, and familial relationships didn't matter because I don't look like them.

**I'd just like to add that for as many rude Latino people I've met, I've met 4x as many wonderful Latino people.

Been called a ch*nk multiple times by random people in public, been told as a child that I should be performing better in school because of the "type of person" that I am, been called a dog-eater by peers, asked "what's your real name" (even though my government name is an English one), etc.

One time someone called me a ch*nk, I explained that despite them being shitty for thinking that's okay, that I'm not even Chinese, so they must be extra braindead. I also said that it must be disappointing to know less of the English language than a non-white person, and that if a white person like them can't learn proper English, then they're failing their own expectations of what it means to be American. I suppose hearing me say that in perfect American English was enough for them to realize how dumb they were being. Everyone in the room glared at them and they shut the fuck up and left lmao.

My wife is Asian and we live in the UK. Quite often when we meet people who instead of simply asking "what sort of job do you do" they ask things like "Do you work in the NHS", "Are you a nurse", "Do you work in a care home".

Some random person outside a shop asked me how much my Asian bride costs.

My wife and son were getting off a bus and somebody asked her how much would she sell her son for.

Probably a bunch more but that's all that comes to mind atm.

As a stupid fucking young person I tried to convince my black friend that it was ok for me (a white) to use a racial slur (you know the one) using some kind of fucked up Louis CK logic, completely disregarding the fact that a) it's obviously not ok, and b) I really hurt his feelings.

I haven't experienced any noticeable racism other than someone using a slur on me because they thought (incorrectly) that I was mixed race.

I might have been treated differently because of my race (caucasian), I didn't realize it. I just assumed that the person is an asshole to everyone. I've never been called any sort of slur.

In Australia.

“Got a spare smoke there, bro?”

“No, mate. Sorry.”

“FUCK YOU, YA WHITE CUNT!”

I’ve had this word-for-word interaction probably 100 times this year already.

My dad worked down in Georgia on a nuke plant for a spell. Being from Pennsylvania he always said while the West was 10 years ahead of us, the South was at least 10 years behind.

Anyways to exemplify this, he was the only white guy on the job site to associate with the black man, sitting with him on the bus and playing chess with him. My dad said he never once won a game against that man.

The good old boys didn't like this and would give my dad a lot of shit, referring to him as the damn Yankee and even carving the shit into bathroom stalls. My dad was always something of a scrapper with a pretty keen sense of justice and so one time in the break room following more comments about his northern roots he shot back, "we beat you once we'll beat you again."

My ex accused me of "muddying his bloodline" when he got radicalized, because I didn't pop out Aryan children. They came out assorted but all were "white", certainly by local standards (how creepy it feels typing that, ick) but by the nonsense he'd absorbed on Stormfront, he (retroactively) expected me to have popped out a string of wee blonde angels.

Other than that, I was the beneficiary of some crazy racism once, got AAA to come tow my car in 4 minutes flat once when I gave the address and the dude thought he was rescuing me from a warzone, because it was in a black neighborhood (we don't have the sharp geographic divisions seen up north but do have blocks and areas that are economically distinct and historically black or white). Usual time for AAA was more like 4 hours.

Worst to me was my scumbag mind's determination to see a man as rough and violent because of his looks, a guy who became a good friend and isn't at all like that, just because his looks are like an actor playing an abusive black dad. Seeing this in myself (I didn't lay it on him, but my own mind got it so wrong) was unsettling.