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?
Every summer or Christmas I come home from college to see my family, no one ever asks me about classes, only if I have a boyfriend yet. The summer I got my first girlfriend and was public on facebook about it, all of the questions have stopped about my relationship and the subject is always changed to my degree and my classes and where I’m working.
When I’m meeting my partner’s extended family for the first time, his rather well-off aunt latches onto the fact that I might be from a different socio-economic background and takes the opportunity to grill me about every life detail: who are my parents; what they did for work; what sort of house I lived in as a child; where I attended college…you get the idea. Much to her chagrin, I reveal that I didn’t go to college and did in fact grow up poor in rural America. Another family member has to tell her to leave me alone.
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.
I am a 62-year-old female associate professor who has been teaching with technology at a state university since 2002. Most young people under 25 working retail check-out think I need them to explain how to use the card-reader screen.
So every week, do the Guatemalans come and mow your lawns?
My world history teacher, mocking students for living in a generally wealthy town.
I am talking to the owner of a towing business. He says, “Oh, the phone companies are just raping me…”
I am a survivor of rape and sexual assault. I email him later to ask him to consider changing his language - that using a term of violence so casually contributes to a climate of seeing rape as “no big deal.” He said he’s not politically correct and that I should learn self-defense. He tells me to “Grow up, kiddo.” Then he complains that I didn’t consider his feelings when I told him what had happened to me.
Wow, you’re getting old. You better hurry up and get married if you want to have any kids.
A female resident to me during my annual gynecological exam when I was in my early 30s. Macro fail for assuming every woman wants to get married and have kids. Smaller fail for her clueless remark just a few months after my SECOND date rape.
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.
btw, this teacher is also head of wellbeing.
Hello miss, are any of your bosses here?
A male cop in who walked into my office, speaking to me, a woman.
You’re Asian, so you must be good at math, right?
Kids in middle school to me.
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 don’t look Jewish.