Ever been discriminated for your race, gender, or ethnicity

[Guest]

I'm part African, so I've been bullied in elementary school for that. Hello Shitface !

Well, I've been lucky so far, my brother got his HAIR BURNED for the same reasons when he entered high school.

 

Also, I tend to get people calling me "gay" (how is that even an insult ?!) because my mother likes to buy me yellow or purple or light pink trousers.

Because we all know that BLUE or JEAN or BLACK is the only manly color (unless your skin is black, then you're Shitface).

Edited May 9, 2014 by Guest

[Shimmer Down 668]

I am NOT a white heterosexual male, so yes.

[CosmicHooves 2,705]

Let's see here this is my discrimination list I've been compiling for awhile now. Not all fits under the category of the topic, but hey they're about discrimination!

Me = What others think

male = sexist

white = racist

under 21 = irresponsible

Christian = bigot

Republican = greedy

furry = into beastiality

clopper = neck beard devoid of morals

Brony = pedophile

Otaku = weirdo into foreign crap

listen to dubstep = no music tastes

owns a WiiU = casual and childish

introverted = reclusive freak

slow learner = mentally deficient

and the list goes on!

Geez.

All of those sound exactly like me, but I do not fit any of the stereotypes.

Ecept furry, I'm not a furry.

Oh and also not Otaku. Not that either.

[Doc. Volt 2,561]

i got discriminated for being Italin when i was in germany to register a patent for an automatic programmable board we developed at the university, i got treated  like shit and like i was from a 3rd world country, plus they didn't even want to register it because of "lack of documents " and other shit... at the end i was able to register it and prove them that north of Italy is something different than the rest of Italy.. but nevermind... i got my patent and i am still proud of what i am

[Khaoios 1,970]

Its unfortunate that there is so much hatred on this Earth...........to a point I don't want to live on it anymore.   However, i have been "bullied" b/c of my ethnicity, and the funniest part is.......I'm a white Hispanic who is Spanish and Cuban decent.   Alongside that, when ppl i went to school with, hear "Spanish", Mexican and border hoppers pop in there head.  In response to there words, it tells me one thing and one thing only.  There methods of thinking is pathetic.

[Archer Dash 163]

All the time, being half white half asian gets me hate from all angles.  
Though I discriminate against people as well, for different reasons though.

Let's see here this is my discrimination list I've been compiling for awhile now. Not all fits under the category of the topic, but hey they're about discrimination!

 

I'm this except not a furry. 

[Atteez 10]

I'm half Filipino half German, but I have more of an Asian appearance. I remember a few years back I had someone keep saying to me that I was foreign because of the fact I'm Asian, but I didn't actually think that was a big deal. I didn't even get why he say so in the first place. I mean, I was born in America for crying out loud.

 

Now, I know someone that constantly degrades me for being an Asian, often saying that I'm Japanese or Chinese despite the numerous times I tell them I'm Filipino. He says I would fly a kamikaze or something into a building and often cites that I'll use my knowledge of math to attack him in some way.

 

I honestly find those insulting. Superior knowledge in math? That's stereotypical, though I would love that. Kamikaze? I think he's out of his freaking mind.

[Sommar 1,289]

When I was a little girl, I LOVED Pokémon. I collected the cards, games, action figures, and whatnot. I loved the franchise so much I brought the cards and toys to school. I got made fun of a ton for like the franchise because "it was for little boys".

 

I'm really pale, so I got called many names before due to my light skin. Not racist comments, but comments like "vampire".

[ThatOneComrade 1,091]

As an African female living in the US, yeah, I have. Pretty recently, actually. I went to CVS to buy some tums and a soda, and this cash register guy tells me, "Get out of our country, you fucking n-word!" And refuses to let me pay for it. Well, what're you gonna do? I just went to the other guy and explained what happened. He was extremely sorry for his co-worker's words, said he'd have a talk and inform their boss, and let me pay with him. The guy that yelled at me stared me down out the way.

 

That wasn't a good day for me.

Edited May 25, 2015 by Pokekid543

[The Lonely Paradox 124]

It was the second grade.

 

My palms were sweaty as I looked at this door, this...

 

one

 

door.

 

This was my one chance to supersede the social dogma that was beset upon me from the very day that I was born.

 

I opened the door, and walked in.

 

"Eww, no boys allowed!" one girl said.

 

"I'm telling the teacher!" another one says.

 

Needless to say, I was sent home for going into the girls' restroom.

His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy

There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti

He's nervous, but on the surface he looks calm and ready to defy social norms,

But he keeps on forgetting that boys and girls have different restrooms for a reason

[Clover Heart 978]

Being agender, I've been told that my gender identity isn't real and that I suffer from "special snowflake syndrome." I'm sorry if I can't identify with any gender and that I just don't get gender identity first hand. Should I pretend like I do and make an idiot of myself? Cuz I've done that in the past. It's not fun.

 

I'm a white American living in Japan. I really try to tread lightly when it comes to the words "racism" or "discrimination." Foreigners, particularly white foreigners over here almost seem to be chomping at the bit to have the opportunity to call someone out on their racism. I don't quite get it? I think it's a matter, possibly, of being in the majority and having to be conscious of what they say or do regarding other races. Then when the shoe's on the other foot, they're all too eager to play the victim. People call things racist without really understanding what it means. 

 

I got a little long with my explanation. If you want some cultural context, you can click here:

Racism is either treating someone badly or not as well as everyone else solely because of their race or any sort of derogatory or hateful speech toward them. The latter's a little easier to pick out, although it does get blown out of proportion. People think there are "microaggressions" taking place when someone asks how long they're gonna be here for. The interpretation is that they're basically urging them to go home. The reality of the situation is that the majority of foreigners here return home after a few short years. There aren't so many who stay for good, although people who do are of a considerable number. You don't know why someone's asking. However, there are some certain groups or people who are clearly being hateful. The people who directly tell foreigners to go home or who say that Japan doesn't need foreigners, yeah, that's racism. I've never encountered that, but some people have. 

 

For the former, though, people tend to cry racism over the littlest things, from someone not observing their country's customs (seriously, bro?) to simply having someone look at them a way they don't like. The thing is, unless it's harming you in any way, there's no really reason to take issue with it. Stop being overly sensitive. However, even if it does harm you in some way, that still doesn't imply that it's racism. The tricky thing about racism when applied to actions that aren't paired with statements which explicitly call out someone's race is the matter of intent. Somebody snubbed you. Or pushed you. Or any other number of things. Unless it's paired with a phrase like "fucking foreigners!" you can't be sure of someone's intent when they do something. A common example cited for the "racism" of Japanese people is the "foreigner seat." The "foreigner seat" is any seat next to a foreigner. Foreigners love to claim that because nobody will sit next to them on the train, that means they're racist. When in fact, you have no idea why someone doesn't wanna sit next to you. Some people just like to stand. I've been on a nearly empty train before where someone gets on and they stand anyway, regardless of the fact that they could have many choices in seats. Some people might be getting off the next stop over. Some people just don't like to sit next to other people. The point is, you don't know what's going through someone's head when they choose to stand or sit next to someone other than you, so you can't call it racism.

 

So, I'm a bit skeptical of calling anything racist to begin with. However, I do have one experience that I have reason to suspect might have been racism.

 

I used to send money orders to the States in order to pay for certain bills back over there. There are two post offices in my city, but for a while, only the one did money orders. Often when I'd go, I had this one guy who'd process my order. It seemed like no matter what I did, he found some way to nitpick the way I'd fill out the forms, and I'd have to do them over again nearly every single time. At least, every time I had him. When it was someone else, I rarely had this problem. And when I did have that problem, it was a clear mistake. But this guy would nitpick the littlest things. He would judge the way I'd write my letters, like I don't know my own fucking alphabet. I remember even this one time, I was writing something like an "R," but I started out writing it as an "A." I'd only written the left side of the letter, just the downward stroke, not even the other side or the horizontal line. So I started to turn it into an "R," but nope. He made me write my entire form all over again just because my "R" was slightly slanted. On top of that, he'd serve a bunch of people in front of me without processing my order. I used to think it was because it was busy. Having had other clerks assist me, though, and having a half hour to an hour extra time tacked onto my errand whenever I'd have this guy indicated to me that he just didn't wanna process my order.

 

Now, as I said before, since I don't know his intent, none of this can necessarily be called racism. However, one time, I was fed up with him. I brought my partner with me because I was sick of dealing with bullshit and I was hoping that having him around could make things go faster. I asked the guy every single step of the way as I was writing what to write and how to write it so I wouldn't make any mistakes so he couldn't make me write it again. There's one part of the top of the form that calls for English block letters for name and address, but one part at the bottom that asks for it again. On the form, it said that it could be written in kanji, but I was in no mood to start over. On top of that, it's much faster to write my address in kanji than it is in English. Also, it takes up less space to write in kanji and the box is tiny. So I asked, him, "Can I write my address in kanji?" He said, "No, because you can't write kanji." Allow me to make a clarification. "Can" in English has two meanings: permission and ability. In Japanese, these are two completely different words, so there's no mistake that he told me that I lack the ability to write kanji. And though he didn't say the reason directly, it seems pretty clear why he said it.

 

Luckily, as I said, my partner was there. He stood up for me, saying "She can so write kanji!" And the guy just kept trying to make excuses for why my kanji wasn't good enough until my partner basically out-argued him, and I got to write my address in kanji.

 

It might seem like a small thing. However, I've spent years of my life learning Japanese. It's something I've put a lot of time, dedication and passion into. I learned Japanese just so I'd be able to communicate with people when I moved here. Because from the first time I visited Japan, I fell in love with the culture and the lifestyle and so many different aspects of it. I furthered my studies both on the language and the culture studying abroad here and subsequently moving here. I know I'm not fluent and there are a lot of things I don't know. But I genuinely try to and am eager to learn. If I wasn't, I wouldn't even be here. This is just such a huge part of who I am now. So to have someone so fervently declare that I had basically no knowledge of a language I had spent years learning and learning just because he has to have a fucking stick up his ass about the color of my skin was incredibly hurtful and disheartening.

 

I wasn't aware that I could have done anything at the time. My impression was that Japanese people don't like to make waves, so I probably have no way to make a complaint about this kind of person. Again, keeping in mind, it wasn't just the kanji thing; it was a combination of many things. However, when I mentioned it a few years later to my partner, he said, yeah, you shoulda complained about it. I wasn't aware that I had any way to do that. At least now I know that if something like that happens in the future, I do have something I can do about it.

 

Anyway, the other post office, which is much closer to my house anyway, started processing money orders and I was able to do it there from then on. Though I wish I'd complained, at least I never have to see that douche nozzle ever again.

 

That was probably way too long O.o But I wanted to provide a lot of context for it. Because on paper, it does seem like a small thing. But from my point of view, it was, like I said, a very hurtful thing. I think that's my only account of anything close to racism here in Japan, though. Don't get me wrong, this is not most people. Most people I've met are very kind, especially in the service industry. It was just one asshole. And there will be assholes.

Edited May 25, 2015 by Clover Heart

[LittleMac 3,085]

Well, I personally haven't but it is very common where I live. Particularly when it comes to religion. My friend was stopped on his way to the cinema and was asked outright 'are you a f*nian?' (this word is usually used as a derogatory term to Catholics. I know not many people even know of it but I censored it in case anyone is offended by it)

I am fortunately in a position where I am not a target for this but prejudice as a whole is very common for multiple reasons in my area

Edited May 25, 2015 by LittleMac

[Steel Accord 6,660]

Aren't "race" and "ethnicity" synonymous?

 

In any case I'm glad to say no I've not, and I've been all over the world so you'd think I'd catch flak for at least being American. No though, if anything people have been nicer to me.

 

I remember once I was in Greece and visited what felt like eight different hotels. The management at one of them actually said that they preferred American guests to their own countrymen.

 

"Americans are more polite." The older woman said.

 

Which leads me to the conclusion from my personal experience that Americans are most truly hated by themselves.

[Prince Firemane 309]

I've had to deal with it a couple of times. I went to my sophomore high school in an area where white people were the minority and that was only a problem for me a handful of times, but never from my fellow students. I was in my couple-of-year-long phase of being a "bad apple"; i.e. smoking weed and cigarettes. The primary ethnicity in the area were Hispanics while black and whites were more or less even in our numbers. Because we were doing things that we shouldn't have been doing, naturally we all had several dealings with the police.

 

But I started noticing that one of the cops was legitimately harassing us. He would actually violate our Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure. See, a cop is allowed to ask you if you consent to a search without probable cause; but if you do not consent and they have no probable cause, they must be on their way. Most cops I've dealt with will abide by that. However, this one cop would turn around and use your lack of consent as probable cause to search you anyway under the pretense of "if you have nothing to hide, you'll consent to a search". Yeah. As anybody who has been searched can tell you, even a frisk can make you feel violated; so of course hardly anyone would consent to one.

 

This one cop, who was Hispanic, would only do that to the non-Hispanic kids. I've seen him many times blatantly ignore the groups of Hispanic kids who were very obviously smoking bowls of weed to harass the groups of white and black kids not doing anything. Now, I like to think of myself as pretty objective when it comes to issues like this, even though I had these thoughts about this guy, I kept them in check because I knew that at least part of my opinions stemmed from me being petulant because he caught me doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing.

 

But my objectiveness went completely out the window when he caught me again. I knew I was screwed, so I decided to cooperate. I handed over all my smokes and my lighter; everything I had on me. So, he slams me over the back of his car, handcuffs me and sexually assaulted me in front of 25 witnesses. And the shittiest part about it is that we all knew that he assaulted me, but we couldn't say anything; no one would've believed us. But later on he got busted with several illegal drugs in his system, plus several pounds of God-only-knows what in his home and is still in jail; so I feel I got my justice anyway.

Then there was my junior year of high school in a different area where one of my classmates tried to run me over with his truck because he made no attempts to hide the fact that he loathed me for being gay. But he's a shitty driver anyway; I was able to easily jump out of the way, I gave him the finger and went about my business. I never say him again after that.

[Boyevyye De 244]

On the contrary, people look up to me because I am a Cossack. I guess call it positive discrimination? I dont know. I suppose I fit the image of what a Cossack is supposed to be like, or a female one anyways. 

[Hocus Pocus 636]

Yup. Social Justice Warriors have said some rather rude things to me in the past because they take one look at me and think I'm just another  "heterosexual white man".... Which is especially insulting because I am neither heterosexual nor a man (asexual and MtF Trans)...

 

In fact, My boss is a woman, I'm MtF trans, I hate everypony equally, and especially online... it can be pretty damn hard to find anypony that can comprehend my lack of a sexual preference...

 

So in other words, SJWs...

 

 

... But seriously, I've been told that I'm responsible for rape, as well as oppressing women and black people just by existing.... bunch of bloody idiots if you ask me.

[EmiliaBoneca 52]

well my friends pick on me because i "still like my little pony" but nothing more

also i been racist maybe sometimes but i really sorry

[Lisa 5,553]

Never really. I mean my British friends call me a criminal because I'm Australian.

 

(If you don't know Australian history: Basically, Australia started off as a convict settlement; an island to drop off criminals and make them work to build a colony.)

 

But they're my friends who're just messing around so I can't say I've been actually discriminated against. 

Edited May 27, 2015 by Papillon

[Christmasy Britty 2,553]

i was once called a hipster girl because of the fact that I looked really white

[Kivil 1,721]

I was told that "all women are supposed to be in the kitchen." I responded with. "Obviously you have never met a feminist." That is why I find myself caring for the female gender more than I do males.

[JonasDarkmane 19,785]

No, I haven't. There aint a lot of people that hold up a grudge against Icelanders except for those that are against whale hunting :/. I have seen some people treat other Icelanders badly though due to them being Icelandic *Shudders* 

[Skye 463]

I've been told I just want to be a "special snowflake" for being genderfluid and I've had someone flat out refuse to call me by the pronouns I wanted because I didn't have the sexual parts.

I've also had stuff thrown at me on the bus because I'm white. I go to a primarily African American and Hispanic school, you see. I've learned not to see color, why can't they?

[King Sejong 859]

   No, but I have always felt that I could for being Jewish and a French Canadian, especially by conspiracy theorists that see a Jewish takeover of the world, I am wealthy but I am not a millionaire, I may be a Jew but I am not a Zionist, besides I am a Reform Jew that believes in justice and equality for all. I did face some moments for being French, but not as much, it was after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, back when making fun of the French counted as a victory, however I was a French Canadian, and Canada was involved in Afghanistan, including many French Canadians from Royal 22e Regiment, but to many people at the time, a Frenchmen was a Frenchmen, whether we were from metropolitan France or Louisiana, anyway I don't feel that my bravery in battle is something to boast about, I have that Voie de Jolie attitude common to French heritage, of making the most of peaceful moments in life, we are not Vikings any more, we don't need to need to be remember in sagas of glorious battle, yes, I am a French Canadian and a Jew, so even if I were discriminated, it would have hurt my feels, but not bend my will nor spirit, to give that person the satisfaction of watching me recoil.     

[Nila Bean 133]

I wouldn't exactly say "discriminated against" (like in a bad way) but at my school the girls are treated A LOT differently than the males. Basically, the old fashioned "rules" about females still apply in their heads. Sexist? I wouldn't exactly say they're sexist. Most of the time it's not meant to be offensive. That's just how they were raised....

 

Now that I think about it, I've never seen a male/female fight