This is the first post in a four-part series centered on listening to lived experiences with racism.
We are living in a heavy, divided moment—one that can leave many of us feeling overwhelmed and unsure how to respond.
Recently, during a coffee date with my 14-year-old daughter, she asked if I was okay. I tried to explain how heavy I felt about what’s happening in our country. When she asked me again the next day, I couldn’t hold back my tears. For a while, I felt stuck—unsure of what to say or do. But I don’t want to stay frozen.
It’s easy to believe that the issues we see in the news are happening somewhere else—not in our own communities, schools, or churches. But the reality is they’re happening to people we know and care about.
Growing up in the Deep South, I knew racism existed but naively thought it was mostly just among the older generation. That belief fell apart in high school when I began dating a Black classmate. What followed wasn’t quiet discomfort or whispered disapproval—it was immediate and overt. A staff member at my school contacted my mom to ask if she was “aware of the problem.” A close friend told me her parents said we could no longer be friends. A white male classmate informed me that the section I’d sat in at a basketball game was for whites who like whites only. My date from a neighboring school canceled our plans for a school dance on the same day for the same reason.
You might think those were just 16- and 17-year-old boys being immature. But this wasn’t just immaturity or “boys being boys.” It was racism, full stop. And those boys didn’t stay boys for long. Within a few years, they became adults in positions of authority, shaping their workplaces, schools, and communities.
I’m sharing this brief moment from my own life not to center my experience—or because I have this figured out (I definitely don’t)—but to explain how my early understanding of racism was shaped. For a long time, I believed racism looked like moments that were explicit, undeniable, and impossible to excuse. Growing up in a small town in Alabama, I also understood it almost exclusively as a Black-white issue.
What I didn’t yet understand was how often racism survives not through cruelty alone, but through politeness—through assumptions, silence, and systems that appear neutral—and how broadly it shows up across races, cultures, and communities. That understanding has not come from my own experiences, but from listening to the stories and lived experiences of others.
For a long time, uncertainty made me hesitate, afraid of saying the wrong thing. But staying silent didn’t feel like the right choice either. So instead of speaking over others, I’m choosing to listen and to make space for the stories that follow.
I’ve asked people in my circle to share some of their experiences with racism. I am so grateful that they chose to be vulnerable and trust us with their stories. My hope is that we sit with what’s shared here with our defenses down, take time to truly listen and reflect with empathy and compassion, and do our part to push back against harm and create a better future for everyone.
The stories that follow may look different on the surface, but are connected by a common thread: racism is not always loud or overt. Often, it shows up in ways that are normalized, minimized, or dismissed—yet still deeply felt by those who experience it.
Tae Phillips
Racism doesn’t always show up in loud, unmistakable ways. For people who are seen as a “model minority,” it often comes wrapped in politeness, humor, or assumptions that are easy for others to dismiss.
Growing up as a South Korean adoptee, I learned that racism isn’t always loud or overt—especially when it’s directed at people who are expected to be grateful, quiet, or “successful.” I learned quickly that certain forms of racism are widely recognized as unacceptable. Slurs are condemned. Overt hatred is called out. But stereotypical jokes about Asian people—about our eyes, our intelligence, our supposed abilities—rarely provoke the same reaction. From my lived experience, they’re often brushed off as harmless or even funny. The outrage simply isn’t the same.
Living in a place like Alabama adds another layer. Most people are genuinely polite, which means racism often shows up as what I think of as polite ignorance. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been asked where I’m “really” from, or whether I’m Japanese or Chinese. These moments aren’t always meant to be cruel, but they are constant.
Over time, that constancy takes a toll. I call it the daily and lifelong bullshit effect. Walking through the world on edge, bracing yourself for the next comment, the next look, the next joke—it changes you. It shortens your fuse and keeps your body tense. I sometimes say I’d rather deal with overt aggression than carry the quiet, relentless burden of polite racism every single day.
What I wish more people understood about racism is how exhausting it is. I’m not especially interested in debates about intent, politics, or tone. I care about the cumulative impact. It is life-altering.
That exhaustion has shaped how I move through the world. I don’t give people the benefit of the doubt anymore. And I’ll be honest, years of navigating this have left me angry. When racism shows up, I want it to be confronted decisively. I want people to feel the weight of their actions strongly enough that they think twice before doing it again.
That reality has led to moments I’m not particularly proud of—times when I reacted out of accumulated anger rather than calm reflection. But those reactions didn’t come out of nowhere. They were shaped by a lifetime of being expected to absorb comments, assumptions, and dismissals quietly.
Is that approach always mature? Probably not. But it’s the product of lived experience—of what happens when racism is minimized often enough that the people carrying it are left to manage the fallout alone.
Luisa Mercado
Some of my experiences still feel too painful to revisit. But there are other, smaller moments that stick with me because they reveal how easily assumptions are made, even when no harm is intended. I tend to cope with those moments through humor, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter.
One of those moments happened when I was growing up. My dad and I were at the grocery store, standing in the cheese section and speaking Spanish. A woman walked up to us and said, “Excuse me, y’all know they’ve got blocks of Mexican cheese buy one, get one free over at Winn-Dixie, right?” My dad smiled and responded in Spanish, and he speaks English just fine.
We laughed about it afterward. I didn’t feel harmed, and I don’t think she meant anything unkind. But it was still an assumption. We aren’t Mexican; we’re Puerto Rican. She could have asked what we were cooking, or said nothing at all. Instead, she filled in the blanks based on how we looked and the language we were speaking.
Another moment came years later, when I was visiting home from New York and went to Walmart with my mom. She’s a tiny, sweet woman, and she’s bilingual. At the checkout, the cashier yelled the total at her slowly and loudly, as if she couldn’t understand English. I jumped in immediately, angry, and said, “My mother speaks English.” My mom chose not to switch languages, and we left.
That moment hit harder. It wasn’t about accent or comprehension; it was about the assumption that someone who looks a certain way, or speaks a different language, must be unintelligent. The irony, of course, is that my mom speaks multiple languages fluently.
Growing up with dark hair and dark features, and being visibly different in overwhelmingly white spaces, meant being constantly noticed—often for no reason at all. These moments weren’t dramatic or headline-worthy, but they accumulated. And like many people, I learned to laugh my way through them, even when they were exhausting.
I still believe in people. I try to lead with kindness and curiosity. But these experiences have taught me how easily assumptions are made, and how often they’re dismissed as harmless when you’re not the one carrying them.
Anonymous Contributor
It was my third day on campus at a large public school in the South. A group of us decided to check out a fraternity rush party. I was with a mixed group of friends. In addition to me, there was another biracial friend, one Black friend, and two white friends. We were wide-eyed freshmen. We walked over together, played a little beer pong, and mostly stuck with each other. I didn’t really interact with anyone outside our group, and nothing felt tense or confrontational.
Not long into the night, two of my friends, Landon and Mark, went inside the house for a bit. When Landon came back out, he told us we were leaving. I remember thinking, We just got here. But he was firm. “We’re out,” he said. “I’ll explain later.”
What I learned afterward was harder to sit with. Inside the house, someone had told Landon and Mark that they were welcome, but that their friends were not. A few of us had been singled out and quietly excluded.
I don’t throw around the word “racism” lightly. I didn’t say anything offensive. I didn’t break any rules. And I barely spoke to anyone there. The decision clearly wasn’t based on behavior. That leaves very few explanations—how we looked, or the color of our skin. There’s no charitable way to read that moment.
This was quite a culture shock to me. This was 2011, not 1960. I wasn’t prepared for something that blatant—and also that subtle. Nothing was said publicly. No slurs were used. There was no confrontation. Just a quiet message delivered behind closed doors: you’re welcome; your friends aren’t.
And that’s what makes moments like this so hard to name. I don’t know who said it. I can’t go back and prove it. There’s no paper trail. All I have is the memory and the fact that it happened.
One thing I’ll always remember, though, is Landon’s response. The door was open to him, but not to all of us. So he closed it himself. He rounded everyone up and left. He didn’t try to justify it or negotiate a partial welcome. He chose not to step through an open door if it meant leaving others behind.
People can call that allyship or whatever term they want. I don’t really care about the label. I care that he made the choice. He’s still one of my best friends.
When people think of racism, they often picture white hoods or shouted slurs. But most of the time, it doesn’t look like that. It looks like this—quiet, deniable, and impossible to prove. And yet, just as real.
These stories are all unique, but they share a common thread. Racism doesn’t always look the same, but whether subtle, overt, or wrapped in politeness, it leaves a lasting impact and shapes how people move through the world.
This series exists for one primary reason: to listen.
My hope is that these stories encourage you not only to continue reading, but also to continue listening—to the people in your own life, to stories that may feel uncomfortable or unfamiliar, and to voices that are often dismissed or overlooked.
If you’re looking for a place to continue listening, one space I’ve found meaningful is StoryCorps, where people share their lived experiences in their own words.
As moms, part of this work is noticing how early these lessons are learned. In the next post, we’ll listen to stories of how racism shows up in childhood—and how early those experiences often begin.
