@rhythmdestroyer3 said:
TW: racial trauma, tone policing, gaslighting, verbal/emotional abuse
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So one of the worst racist experiences I had was from my mom and stepdad. It actually led me to moving out and cutting contact.
For context, I am mixed race South Asian. My dad's side is from India and my mom's side is white (mostly German and a tiny bit Irish). I am on the lighter side, but i would prefer the term racially ambiguous. That seems to fit the experiences I have had.
But anyway, I had noticed for a long time that we did not see eye to eye when it came to issues of race. They would constantly say all these microaggressions like how Indian food looks gross or that I smell like curry.
Would also make fun of Indian accents.
And that's not getting into people of other racial backgrounds. But they like to pretend like they're very accepting.
But it is extremely tokenizing, like patting themselves on the back because my mom married a brown man and we are her mixed kids, and so on.
It's really gross and dehumanizing in a way.
So we had this massive fight because they were trying to tell me colonization was a good thing. Considering how half my family is from India and suffered from very brutal colonization from the British, I called bullshit on that.
And they were trying to justify imperialism in the Philippines but then it just derailed from that initial argument. I was just trying to explain like, hey, maybe let's not try to say that genocide, elsavement, and theft of Indigenous land is a good thing. But no, I'm the one in the wrong.
I was very upset after this whole incident and tried to explain how I felt but they did not listen and I felt very unheard. I literally wrote out a whole letter and read it to them at dinner and they started saying "I'm not racist, my family never owned slaves, you're just overreacting, we raised you better than this, you're too PC and we feel like we have to watch what we say around you." Also while slamming dishes around in the sink.
I talked to multiple therapists and they were all like, "You've experienced racial trauma," but it was more than just that.
Because I felt like they betrayed me and stabbed me in the back. And I had no way to even talk about it with them because they were the ones causing me so much pain.
I should also say. This is not the first time l've ever experienced racism either since I have lived my life as a mixed person, but it just felt so visceral and I don't know how to describe it. It just hurt so much coming from people who supposedly had my back but when it came down to it, they discarded me like it meant nothing.
This is racism.
I'm sorry that your family, who are supposed to support you, have done these things.