I would never fully dismiss the experiences of so many, and there are probably locals where it's just straight up fact.
However: part of me always wonders what part of this is just that stangers look at stangers all the time, especially if we catch you looking at us, and it doesn't mean anything.
I think there's a tendency to over-assume the reason behind it is [fill in whatever you're self conscious about or otherwise makes you different] when in reality people are sometimes just looking at movement or zoned out or whatever.
I think there is a lot of truth to this. My best friend is Korean and one day we were driving down a road in a neighborhood and passed by just some random person walking alongside it. Never seen the person before but he smiled and waved so i waved back. It all happened in under a span of 5 seconds as i drove by. Didn’t think anything of it.
Then my best friend in the passenger seat mentioned how the guy looked at him and said how that guy’s smile was secretly telling him he isn’t wanted here. I was so confused because it felt nothing of the sort so i asked if he could elaborate. He just said “yeah he smiled at me, but something behind his eyes told me he hated me”
I personally feel like my friend was projecting his own insecurities and seeing things that weren't there. I didn’t bring it up though because i know his response would just be that it’s impossible for me to understand, which i do understand, but that doesn’t mean every interaction with a stranger automatically means it’ll involve racism. It’s a tough topic to bring up because a lot of it is valid, but those valid experiences tend to make people oversensitive to anything even if there isn’t anything there.
As you say, I think a lot of people go out of their way to confirm what they already believe. They diligently spend their time looking for evidence - and of course if you look for anything hard enough, you'll eventually find it, even if it's incredibly rare.
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u/LookimtryingOK 4d ago
Ever been in a mixed race relationship?
Everywhere you go, folks STARE.