As soon as I saw this thread I knew exactly who was going to try to come on here and invalidate OP’s feelings. Typical.
If the feelings are invalid then they should be invalidated.
Building up groups and people that are trying to be confident is a strong value, in any ways try to find someone for yoursefl that understands you and helps along with maybe all those stuff in front of you.
There are no “safe spaces” in the real world.
I wouldn’t worry about the micro-aggressions. Most Asian-Americans face some pretty heavy macro-aggressions in the admissions process. They need an SAT score about 140 points higher than whites to get into elite schools. For Harvard, in 2013, the average East Asian/Indian had an SAT score of 2299, while the average African-American was 2107. That is the issue that should be getting you worked up. That is real racism.
Well, I can sympathize a bit with the OP. Just after one semester of college I’ve had random strangers on the street (who were white) say comments that unnecessarily brought up the fact that I was a minority and that the people I was hanging out with were minorities. I wouldn’t call it “micro-aggression”, but I didn’t like the comments and the comments definitely made me feel uncomfortable. It wasn’t something I’d encountered in high school before, despite having attended majority white schools for my entire life. It’s not an issue that would personally make me overly upset, but it gets annoying with repetition.
Anyways OP, glad to hear that you’re determined to stay positive! I hope you’ve found or will find friends that respect your feelings on this! Sometimes you just gotta vent on this stuff haha.
OP, I am so sorry to hear about everything you’ve gone through!
People can be very ignorant sometimes, and I understand that you need a place to vent. I agree with a few of the above posters–form some alliances and surround yourself with people who appreciate you
Please don’t hesitate to call out some of these people on their insensitive jokes. One of the reasons we have racism is because no one wants to talk about it. If you express that you’re offended, maybe some of them will think before they speak.
Lastly, stay strong! As much as I hate to agree with some of the (ruder) posters on here, people can be jerks, and sometimes you have to just hold your head high and keep walking. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, amiright?
I always find these discussions interesting since I’m British. I’m South Indian and I grew up in an all-white middle class area, to the point where I have no Indian friends. I have never come across racism, and I’m usually able to be classist and racist against Muslims (a.k.a Pakistanis) and Blacks too.
I didn’t even see a concerning divide between gay guys and normal guys. I saw thm all the same. We’re talking about the WASP New England types though. (And I do think racism in LGBT is a problem).
My biggest issue with racism was within this decade and mostly to do with the liberal pro-muslim racism. (e.g. 1D, colorism, racism against South Indians, etc).
I used to manage a very busy and fast-paced retail store. Every day I would get in one or more confrontations with a customer who was trying to cheat us or was just being unreasonable. About 90% of these people were white. Sometimes one of the non-white ones would say I was being racist. I wasn’t confronting them due to their race…it was due to them acting like a jerk. In other words whenever people have a disageement and they are of different races, it isn’t necessarily based on race…maybe one of them (or both) are just being jerks and its got nothing to do with race.