People Reveal The First Time They Experienced Racism

The Monkey bars....

Was 8. Was playing on some monkey bars in a neighbor's backyard with their daughter. I'm Asian, she's white. My twin sister was also with us. We were having the time of our lives. My sis and I had been coming over for weeks after school, no permission needed.

Her mom came home early. She came to the backyard and started yelling. Grabbed her crying daughter, yelling she can't play with us anymore because she's already got so many nice WHITE friends. She brought her daughter inside, and came out again to yell at us to go home, that she never wants to see us on her property anymore and her daughter can't be friends with us, ever.

So we left, crying all the way home. Our mom was there and she asked what's wrong, did we fall off the monkey bars. We said no, told her the story. She hugged us and told us what racism is.

I'll never forget. LollipopDreamscape

Light & Dark. 

I've experienced racism even amongst my own race. I'm a darker skinned Malay. Lighter skinned Malays are always acting all superior and crap because of it. Sheesh. ameersyafiq

Apparently this is common in some African countries, too. Darker skinned Africans are treated worse than lighter skinned ones, and if you go to an average African import store in the USA, there is always a shelf of skin-bleaching cream. spiderlanewales

2 Houses Divided!

When my mother ripped my hand out of the hand of the black boy I was playing with after school. You were the best at pretending to be Sonic, Thomas. Black_Bud

Tarbrush.

At my Grandmother's house in the 1960's. I was old enough to understand some of the nuances of speech. My Mother and Grandmother were discussing my black, curly hair, and in a sarcastic manner, my Grandmother said, "Perhaps he's got 'a touch of the tarbrush'..." It was part of an ongoing love-hate relationship between my Mother and Grandmother, and although I knew the comment to be meant as an insult, it was a while before I knew my Grandmother meant, 'Father unknown, and likely to be 'a black man.' This 'tarbrush' term was still common parlance in that part of the world when I left the area in the 1980's. Thank You for the interesting question. S. licktheetruff

Here Comes the.....

When I was a little kid my mum was accused of stealing me. I'm Asian and she's white; I'm adopted.

My dad, also white, feels uncomfortable in public with me because people think I'm a mail order bride. omgwtfbbqfml

No Confusion Here. 

1985, small town in the north. A hmong man kidnapped a 7 year old girl and raped her, claiming she was now his bride.

When he was caught, his lawyer tried claiming it was because "he didn't understand our laws." So the judge responded "so this is okay in Laos?" Guy never made it to prison after that.

My grandpa said the town changed after that. Everyone was really suspicious of hmong men at that point. Local shops wouldn't serve them. There was a campaign to demand they get removed. It was a weird time for a 5 year old who had a few hmong friends. bramlugh

A Lost Chance. 

In high school one of my friends said to me

"You know if you were a little bit fairer you'd have a chance with her"

I still am not comfortable with my skin color. definitely-not-jay

What are YOU?

The first I can remember was about age 5-6. We spent more time at that age with family and close friends so I first learned I was an outsider by other Asians. They spoke the language - I didn't and my mom was white so the other kids/cousins made sure to distinguish I wasn't REALLY one of them.

Around the same age I learned at school that I'd be the "token asian friend." The most common phrase kids and now adult professionals use is "What ARE you?" Well, I'm some kind of asian halvsey who looks Hispanic. People suck. IWearATallHat

So many Flags!

I'm a white/black mix, but my skin is pretty fair, so I don't experience much of the racism against black people. When I was in 7th grade though, I went to a mostly white school, and I was the only kid of color in my math class, and the only mixed kid in my grade I think. I was decent at math before I had this teacher, but I started doing horribly in her class as she would take off crazy amounts of points for little mistakes. I had to start going a mathematics learning center just to keep from failing the class.

At first I just thought she didn't like me as a person until I moved on to eight grade. I knew two sisters who were also mixed in the grade below who were now in her math class, and they experienced the same problems with her. We found out that no one else had a problem with this teacher being crazy harsh, only us mixed kids. It was pretty indirect, but it raised some flags. Troker101

The Ignorant.

I was 8 years old. I was at school in London and some of the 'cool' kids came up to me and started saying that I was a terrorist. I didn't know what that meant and I doubt they did either.

I still remember the look on my mum's face when I went home and asked her. She just looked so sad.

Once she'd explained to me what terrorism was and why the kids were saying it, I started noticing it everywhere. Ignorance is bliss.

No Safe Zone. 

I was walking and holding hands with a girl after a date. She was "colored," which is s different thing than "black" in South Africa. Near the train station in Capetown, a large group of Black men objected threateningly to my stupidity in thinking that "just because Mandela got elected I get to walk around holding hands with a colored girl." Things moved towards violence, and another group of men, colored men, arrived and stepped in on that point - taking my side, I think, just to motivate conflict with the other group.

My date and I just ran. iamkuato

The Outsiders. 

I mean, elementary school? Other kids making fun of my middle name which is Chinese, or doing that thing where they pull they're eyes to be narrower and then speaking in broken English.

Idk, kids are dumb, where does it go from cultural insensitivity to racism? Not a clue, but did it make me feel like an outsider? Yup. HaphazardlyOrganized

Follow Along.

Biracial person here (white and black) I got followed in a store when I was a teenager. I had been called a list of racial slurs before then but being followed stands out the most. SithLordMoshi

Waiting. 

Growing up, my parents were civil rights testers (people hired/volunteer to investigate specific claims of racial discrimination in businesses). I remember being with my mom at a restaurant and being made to "wait for a table" (or being denied service) while my dad (the "white" man for the test) would be seated immediately. HMSArcturus

There is always one in every group....

I was a in Vegas with a black dude one time, and there were lots of Asian tourists. Every time he saw a group of them he would go "Ching chong" and stuff like that. Just to the rest of us, not loudly enough to be heard by anyone else, but still. Also with us was a half-Mexican girl- she lived in a predominantly Hispanic part of town in LA, and when we would drive around by her house she'd complain about other drivers saying things like... "These wetbacks aren't used to paved roads." IDK what my point is... just that PoC can be just a racist as white people, I guess? emthejedichic

By a Hair....

My family and I lived in Saudi Arabia for 16 years. When I was 4, a bunch of Arab women pulled me and my sister's (she was 7 at that time) hair and laughed about it. Being an innocent preschooler at that time, I was physically hurt but didn't understand why they did that to me and my sister. My mom just told us they fancied our hair. So I just teared up a little from the pain and moved on.

Fast forward to our when I was around 9? 10? Years old. The same shit happened to me while I was shopping for school supplies at a store near my school. That time, I was pretty sure it wasn't because they liked my curly hair because I saw a condescending smirk as I looked at the grown woman who pulled my hair.

We barely go back home so I've always thought that KSA was my home. I realized that it really wasn't and will never be completely accepted the way asians are in other parts of the world. bIackIines

"Certain Types."

Well, I've experienced instances of subtle racism before, but I would say that I experienced outright racism only really when I moved. When I got my first job here (customer service), some typical old man, probably from the colonial era, refused my service and loudly talked to my coworker about "certain nationalities" and their thieving nature.

Then at my second job in a nightclub, which I still work at actually, I get occasional comments like my skin being the color of stuff from drunk, aggressive people.

I hate it so much. I go through more subtle types of racism too, mostly in which people assume negative things about me based on my nationality, and I would say it bothers me more than the above. I come from a country which isn't really well liked and kind of misrepresented, on reddit and by western countries in general. It's given me a bit of a complex where I'm conscious to shed the stereotypes people tend to assume about me. I can't really explain it better than that. dvorak_1

Inside Voice.

When I was around 4, I was watching Sesame Street. There was a black man on the screen, and I tried to ask "why do some people have different skin colors?" But since I wasn't good at expressing my thoughts, I said "why does there have to be black people?" I didn't understand why my mom was so angry, but that's when I was taught that racism is a thing, and it's bad. this_is_balls

Playtime.

I remember in primary school, a 6 year old telling someone of the same age, of African descent "you can't play with us because you're black." Couple of years later, the kid drowned in a canal. ace0fskulls

Be Nice. 

My mom still talks about this one, it was when I was 4, my little brother was 2, my older brother was 5 1/2, and my sister was 7. My mom would walk us to a church program when we were young (we weren't Christian, we're Muslim) and on our way there some men in a truck yelled at my mom saying, "Go back to your country ya dirty immigrant!" Apparently I yelled back, "Hey that's not very nice, have a good day mister," because my mom always taught us to be kind even if someone is mean. My mom still brings it up asking me why I'm not that nice anymore? Now I just gotta say mom I'm not as optimistic as I used to be. Municorn1977

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