power, privilege, and everyday life.
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1643 posts tagged race
I am an Asian woman. It’s Halloween today and I walked by a white woman dressed as a geisha, with her face painted and hair darkened. We made and held eye contact for a few seconds, and I think she looked embarrassed. It made me feel me angrier somehow. If it was so easy for her to recognize that this was an embarrassing thing to do, why did she still do it?
A friend and I are talking about what it would be like if I got dreads. I tell him there’s no way my parents would let me have them. In response he says, “They’d probably be glad you’re finally doing something black!” How the hell is some South Asian kid going to tell me what it is to be black? It’s not the first time someone had the gall to presume they knew more about my race than me just because I’m not down with the latest rap music and get good grades, either.
“So every week, do the Guatemalans come and mow your lawns?”
My world history teacher, mocking students for living in a generally wealthy town.
“Why would you wear your hair like that today of all days? It’s not appropriate for a leadership position, it looks unprofessional.”
The prefect coordinator at my high school when she catches sight of my braids (which looked bomb, might I add!!!), before instructing me to tie it back before my photos. She goes on to explain, as though it should be obvious, that as a representative of the school I have a responsibility to uphold a certain image. She later complains about my “stupid braids” to the school and vice captain.
btw, this teacher is also head of wellbeing.
When my father (who is Mexican) picks me up from school, the people in the office assumes he is the gardener or custodian. The yard duties are also not as kind to him like how they treat the white parents.
“Oh, I don’t know how to pronounce those names.”
My supervisor at a new job, about my name. I had frequently repeated my name in order for coworkers & supervisors to learn it.
In Houston, there is a nasty, classist habit of deliberately mispronouncing Spanish-language names and words. I used to hear people who self-defined as “upper class” mispronounce “San Felipe” (a street) as “Sen Flippy”, mispronounce the names of Latino/as to their face, and pretend in Mexican restaurants to not know how to pronounce the items the menu (really? they’re Texas-born adults and they can’t say “enchiladas”?).
“You’re very exotic-looking.”
An awkward, out of context “compliment” my neighbor’s white house sitter gave to me, an Asian-American woman, within 5 minutes of meeting me for the first time. I was wearing my glasses, a dumpy grey Ohio State sweatshirt, and hair in a pony tail.
*first week of freshman year of college*
a white girl from a dorm room across the hall from me starts talking about the James Scholar Honors awarded to some students upon acceptance to the university.
Me: “yeah I am a James Scholar, actually”
Her: *shocked* “Oh really? Is it because you are Hispanic?”
I graduated at the top of my high school class, with extracurricular activities in music, sports and philanthropy with several leadership positions.
We are both sophomores now and I have a higher GPA than her, but she still questions how I get my (merit-based) scholarships and honors.
I am a Latina engineering student. I have been working on a semester-long group project We just presented our design in front of judges who are professional engineers from around the area. I have two group mates: a female immigrant from Korea and a white male. After one presentation, one of the judges of a company for which we all want to intern approached my white male peer and congratulated him on the project and handed him a business card. He did not look at me nor my Asian-American female group mate. We all worked equally on the project. Made me feel as if my contributions will never be worthy of recognition.
Back in high school, I was trying to drop an AP course as it was adding onto the stress of college applications. A lot of the class had already dropped the course but somehow my form hadn’t gotten approved. I ran into my principal one day in the hall. Now my high school was fairly small, but I had never interacted with her much so I don’t believe she even knew my name. I asked her why my form hadn’t gotten approved and she looked at me and said, “This isn’t the Taj Mahal, you can’t just drop courses like that.” I’m very obviously not white, and her reply left me stunned because I just didn’t get it. After talking it over with my friends, they made me realize she had said that because of the brown color of my skin. I felt disgusted that someone with so much influence felt okay saying that to a kid.
My fiancee and I are never acknowledged as a couple, and I think this is because we are both feminine women and different races. Waiters consistently bring us separate checks without asking, shopkeepers at places we are regulars usually eventually ask “so are you two sisters? is that why you are always together?"
We’ll get comments walking down the street like "oh, so sweet to hold your best friend’s hand” or “you girls make me miss my best friend."
When I introduce her to acquaintances or old family friends as my fiancee, they are usually visibly shocked. The frustrating part is that we live in a very liberal city and most of these people consider themselves "cool with gay people” and don’t understand why I get upset.
I’m a bartender, chatting with a customer. He asks me about my background, and I respond that I’m “mixed,” obviously implying that i don’t really want to discuss it (I get asked this all the time). He pushes it, saying “yeah, obviously, but mixed with what?” When I finally tell him that I’m half white and half aboriginal, he responds with “so THAT’S why-” before cutting himself off mid-sentence. This is the same man who, when he first met me, asked I was the daughter of my Indo-Trinidadian manager, the only other POC [person of color] in the room.
“I don’t speak no Spanglish or Chinglish.”
A white male coworker ranting about support technicians not speaking proper English.