Steeped in a Sea of Games
Member
So, back story here, I live in a very white suburb (when I moved here 10 years ago it was about 90% white) that has seen some upheaval in demographics thanks to the influx of a lot of H-2B visa workers coming in to the many medical tech companies around here. Now the city is about 75% white and I've been noticing a lot of white flight in the area as the city now has a much larger population of Indians and Somali's (nowadays it's not strange at all to see a lot of women walking around in a chador, hijab, or other tradiational clothing). The city's public services seem to really draw a lot of the more diverse population in and places like the community center and annual events have become increasingly more diverse.
ANYWAY, I go to the community center a couple times a week to exercise (mostly swimming), and while it's still mostly white people who go there, there's a good sized population of people of Western Asian descent there too. I've never seen anyone have a problem with it before and the added diversity has never been anything I've thought of as negative, but today as I was standing near a few people speaking a language I didn't recognize with my 2-year old daughter (I'm Irish, so my daughter and I are nearly translucently white), some lady comes wandering up to me and loudly proclaims in front of them, straight to my face, "WOW IT'S ALMOST LIKE A FOREIGN COUNTRY AROUND HERE".
I was pretty shocked as I've honestly never been face-to-face with such overt racism in my entire life despite always living in really non-diverse places. I looked at her like she was an alien and said back "So, what?" and she just kind of glared at me and walked away in a huff. I looked at the two Asian people who had stopped talking and were staring at me with a look of total bewilderment and I just sort of had to throw up my hands and went on my way. This whole incident really upset me because I wish I would have responded to the situation better and was overall pretty weird to experience first hand. Now I'm pretty much just sitting here feeling really pissed off that people can be such assholes.
TLDR: Had a crazy white lady talk to me like I'd be fine with her incredibly racist views loudly in front of migrants making me feel like a total co-conspirator in the act.
How often do you guys have to put up with shit like this?
ANYWAY, I go to the community center a couple times a week to exercise (mostly swimming), and while it's still mostly white people who go there, there's a good sized population of people of Western Asian descent there too. I've never seen anyone have a problem with it before and the added diversity has never been anything I've thought of as negative, but today as I was standing near a few people speaking a language I didn't recognize with my 2-year old daughter (I'm Irish, so my daughter and I are nearly translucently white), some lady comes wandering up to me and loudly proclaims in front of them, straight to my face, "WOW IT'S ALMOST LIKE A FOREIGN COUNTRY AROUND HERE".
I was pretty shocked as I've honestly never been face-to-face with such overt racism in my entire life despite always living in really non-diverse places. I looked at her like she was an alien and said back "So, what?" and she just kind of glared at me and walked away in a huff. I looked at the two Asian people who had stopped talking and were staring at me with a look of total bewilderment and I just sort of had to throw up my hands and went on my way. This whole incident really upset me because I wish I would have responded to the situation better and was overall pretty weird to experience first hand. Now I'm pretty much just sitting here feeling really pissed off that people can be such assholes.
TLDR: Had a crazy white lady talk to me like I'd be fine with her incredibly racist views loudly in front of migrants making me feel like a total co-conspirator in the act.
How often do you guys have to put up with shit like this?