Stories (POSTS PAGE EX)

My first year at Davidson another first-year male student said I looked familiar and said he probably knew me from his [Asian language] class. 

My first year at Davidson I noticed that I called my black hallmates “girl” when speaking to them more so than I did with my friends of any other ethnicity.    

(I am a female-identifying, Asian-American student at Davidson.)  I visited a Walmart around campus my first year here and was approached by a white man at the register who asked me if I was Korean. After affirming, he continued to talk to me across the register, asking me if I ate kimchi, if I spoke Korean, and other questions about my heritage. He proceeded to tell me about his Korean wife and even showed me a picture of her. He couldn’t hide his pride at having successfully guessed my ethnicity. I felt incredibly awkward, exoticized, and embarrassed to be having the conversation at such a volume/distance that others could overhear.    

Despite my depth of professional experience, my manager has on multiple occasions called me “kiddo.” 

I work with students and my colleague assumed I would be “uncomfortable” talking to students about their research proposal around slavery, because I’m black. 

I have watched colleagues around me cut, dye, and style their hair in different ways. When I do it, it becomes a public spectacle and “hard to understand.” 

For months, in meetings or after meetings, I have been told I am “sassy” or “have an attitude.” 

I was talking to a colleague about recruiting / sales jobs (which are inherently all about persuading others to ‘buy into’ the candidacy of a new hire or product), and my colleague apologized for using language about “buying people,” because of slavery. Since I’m a woman of color. 

I am the only woman of color in my office, and my manager regularly refers to me as “the mean one.” 

I keep anglicizing people’s names if I see them as White. It’s like all White people have to be Anglos, apparently. I’m always really sorry, but I do it periodically, and then they have to forgive me, after knowing that’s how I see them. Like, their real name is unimportant to me because it has to conform to the box I’ve put them in.