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 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…

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.

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

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.

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.

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.”