What's your experience with racism,discrimination, etc.?

[throwaway123]

I've had enough for my life. I fucking hate it here.

 

[Playlainin]

where are you and what race are you? I've had some terrible experiences growing up. Top one that comes to mind - My school actually had a guy come and play traditional instruments and tell myths and legends to do with the culture of his race (and the majority race of our school) and basically said everyone else is inferior because they don't have that background. I probably remember it too dramatically, but it felt like everything paused and everyone just leant over and starred at me and kind of laughed for not being the same color as them.

So many stories but these things don't get to me now days, I kind of look back and laugh honestly. I do sometimes feel a target on my back or hatred from mainstream media but I don't really go out much or anything so, meh. Plus I don't really watch TV anymore or really consume any media like that.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

I'm Asian American and have lived in America my whole life but I grew up mostly around other Asian Americans (and South Asians) and I even went to a private school full of them. That said, I was still singled out for being the poorest and stupidest kid among them. Even when I started going to public school, I was still around mostly Asians. I never really clicked with the other Chinese kids either until high school. It wasn't until I read the graphic novel American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang that I ever even realized that there were people out there who could make me feel ashamed for my race in the first place though. I started feeling paranoid anytime I walked into a space where there were no other Asian people. Strangely, a lot of the anti-Asian racism I've received actually came from black people (like getting hit with that microaggression of 'Where are you FROM?') or in college when I got called chink for the first time (it didn't bother me too much but it was still weird). That said, I think overall I'm pretty lucky with my experiences. Most of the white people in California are all very pro-diversity so I've never actually been made to feel that bad around them but when I went to Taiwan for the first time when I was 18, I did feel very awkward and dumb for only knowing English. I even know for a fact that people there use 'ABC' as an insult to foreigners like me.

 

[141592653]

As a child I was strongly bullied because of my feminity, including two sexual assaults from other teenagers older than me. The bullying stopped when I began to write things on the wall of school with my blood... and carry a fucking knife with the firm intention to use it on the first person trying to touch me. I'm happy I was not in the US, I was actually determined to do a mass shooting back then, I have to admit it. When you're too angry, you can't think clearly, I was obsessed with taking revenge on the other kids and the administration which did nothing to help me.

As an adult I suffer from a lot of transphobia : I was agressed 2 times (one of them filmed by a bunch of asshole who filmed me and blocked the entry of a small shop at night, couldn't go out though the seller wanted me to, one of them might be a rape I have blacked out) because of it.

I was misgendered and ill treated (forced being nude etc) in psych ward as well as suffer from psychological violence from psychiatrists for this reason, firemen who found me after my first suicide attempt laughed at me because I was trans' (I asked them specifically why they laughed, they didn't hesitate to say why).

50yo + male people come and touch me in the undergroung saying "I don't care you're a boy I wanna fuck you" because trans' woman are seen as prostitute (even if I was a prostitute, I would not be at work in the fking underground).

I suffer a lot of discrimnation to be employed : nobody hired me as a tutor even though I am in ENS (which is the most difficult school to get in with Polytechnique) when my classmates get 50€/hour.

I have remarks, starings, every fucking days.

This is what I get. But I know that I am lucky : I'm not black. Cauz black trans' women live the real nightmare, along with intersex people.

 

[woxihuanni]

I am always a minority of one, so moot point. My smile and calm in the face of things that makes others lose their shit makes me repulsive to anyone. Oh, and my courage in my vulnerability. None of that romantic protecting myself stuff for me. Naked and boring, hence repulsive.

 

[membo]

Being flat out refused for housing because I'm a white foreigner. I could speak the language and my employer would vouch for me. But in that country housing discrimination based on race is legal.

 

[deadgirlahsatan]

Well i get disabled discrimination. I can only walk a little b4 the chronic pain is too much to handle so i use a wheelchair . People will stare a lot. Mainly adults.

Yesterday i was about to get on the bus after seeing a specialist and the bus driver was lowering the ramp for me. This fat cunt saw that and as the ramp was slowly moving up a little bit she went on the bus fast and put her foot on the ramp which cause it to go back down fast. The bus driver was shaking his head at her rudeness.

I wanted to punch her fucking face in.Crazy bitch. I had to sit across from her on the bus and she got off at the same stop as i did.

 

[Soul]

I was born in Africa, and as a child in the US I was taunted for that by other kids, even though my skin was the same color as theirs. I'm sure that has a lot to do with why I've gone out of my way as an adult to live in countries where I was a visible minority. In the country I now live in, some people say I look Jewish, which I am, but no one ever made an issue of it as some people do here.

My experiences have made it easy to see how race is a made-up thing used to enforce a caste system that I don't want any part of. I started identifying as Q when I have to specify my gender, and if there were a Q-like option I could choose as my race I'd do it. I am Spartacus.

 

[VIBRITANNIA]

i got teased about my skin color from this white kid in fifth grade, and one time he even threatened to kill me. and some idiot called me a slave in freshman year. how fun. /s

i've also gotten some gross comments about being a lesbian. just the usual "are you still a lesbian" and "do you like vagina" things, because people aren't original at all.

 

[catalepsy]

Well, my neighbors one apartment down are BLM advocates - i can tell because their car keeps getting keyed. They have all sorts of hand made posters hanging up everywhere around their place, on the door, in the windows, etc.. and the good ol' boys 'round these 'ere parts don't take kindly to them types, ya hear? We's just simple country folk, like our dip an' wrastlin' hogs, but ain't gay to wrastle no hogs an' don' let nobody tell you it is 'cuz it ain't. I mean, how could it be gay to squirm around in bed with one o' them gorgeous oinkers for a few hours? City folk. Psh. They's just jealous they ain't got no beautiful hogs to wrastle.

 

[catalepsy]

I was born in Africa, and as a child in the US I was taunted for that by other kids, even though my skin was the same color as theirs. I'm sure that has a lot to do with why I've gone out of my way as an adult to live in countries where I was a visible minority. In the country I now live in, some people say I look Jewish, which I am, but no one ever made an issue of it as some people do here.

My experiences have made it easy to see how race is a made-up thing used to enforce a caste system that I don't want any part of. I started identifying as Q when I have to specify my gender, and if there were a Q-like option I could choose as my race I'd do it. I am Spartacus.

I don't know why the thought had never occurred to me before, but I'm totally with you there. I can't stand the entire idea of race. It's like some arbitrary line we draw that signifies, in reality, very little, but many people mistake for the entire substance of the person. It's not just trivial, it's insubstantial and meaningless.

 

[Soul]

@catalepsy, you might want to read some of Isabel Wilkerson's stuff. She has a book out called Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which I haven't read, but I've read several interviews, reviews and articles about it.

 

[catalepsy]

@catalepsy, you might want to read some of Isabel Wilkerson's stuff. She has a book out called Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which I haven't read, but I've read several interviews, reviews and articles about it.

I always felt like race was being used as a cynical ploy to keep civic animus churning within the population because race is something at the surface, it's easy to identify even despite the fact that it has no connection with the actual identity of the individuals within those racial subsets. Just put them in their own cattle pens and tell each group that they're better than the other, or mistreated by the other, and eventually nobody's paying attention to the milk getting harvested from our collective udders, or our slow march towards the slaughterhouse. I'm too young to know what the '60s were like, and too old to live through a re-litigation of the civil rights movement. To sum up: humans are all kinda dumb.I know I fit that bill pretty well.

 

[RC90]

Was heavily bullied at elementary school for being gay, that left a mark forever. I grew up to become a broken man thanks to that. I was just a kid, so young. Looking back I can't believe kids can be so mean.