UNSEEN

In middle school, in an international school I went to, the staff and teachers were all British, primarily white, and the microagression and racists comments were always there.

When I went to my middle school graduatation trip to Europe, in Stratford UK, my friends and I were thrown pebbles and cussed at and was told to go back to China.

When I was young, my family had shortly stayed in Indianapolis, and we experienced microagression often. For example, we went to rent a car and the lot was full of rent-a-cars, but still they told us that they didn't have any cars to rent out and a black family that came when we were leaving could get a car right away.

When I was in elementary school, I was bullied by the kids because I was the only Full East Asian in the whole school.

One thing i could remember is that due to my language and cultural barrier, some classmates did not repect me on the projects staff? They had low expectations I guess. Also sometimes on the street, some ppl shouted, "go back to your country" We r coronoa virus shits lol.

I've experienced Anti-Asian violence multiple times. Thankfully, there were no physical attacks, but there were many harassments and threats that I've got in the past. One time, we went to the mall in Atlanta, GA, and one guy came to my family and said go back to your country, you guys are useless, and we don't need Asians in the United States. My family got so scared, so we immediately left the mall, and because of that, we don't go to that specific mall anymore. Also, when I was in high school, my classmate harassed me sexually because he had a "yellow fever."

A few times when I was studying in New Zealand. It was 10~ 11 years ago, I was high school student in Christ Church which is southern city in NZ. It was often hearing swear or any abusive language from strangers on the road. Most of my asian friends experienced same thing as well. And I also got physical attack on the road when it was dark by drunken people.

A lot of it were micro aggressions when I was younger and totally unprovoked since I was doing nothing whenever it happened. A few I remember was when I first moved to the US in elementary school, kids would pull their eyes to make them squint and tease me. At the time I was too young and barely spoke english to realize what they were doing. Then in high school by older guys on my bus who would come to where me and my cousin sat. They would squint their eyes and say things like “ching chong” while laughing about it amongst themselves. Even as an adult now living in a dense asian community, I run across people who would speed along the road on their bikes yelling racial slurs at all of us.

I have had a Caucasian homeless man yell “chink!” to me and a group of my friends.

I’ve never experienced direct anti-asian violence. However, I did experience micro-level racism in predominantly white communities (Rhode Island, classes/dorms back in USC). For instance: not making a single eye contact with me while I talk, instead only choosing to look at/talk to my non-Asian friend during the whole conversation.

A caucasian stranger coming up to me speaking Chinese in a mocking matter.

Starbucks worker & school learning center tutor pretended to not understand my pronouncition. I was explaining a word or menu, but then they were reacting as “why do sound so werid? It doesnt make any sense.”

During my trip to Spain. they called me Chino and tried to touch my head.

I have experienced harassment (physical attack) on the street last year. I couldn't hear what the attacker was shouting precisely but he was shouting curse words at me and my friend.

At first it was just a plain hatred towards me. The person I was. It made me feel less than what I was, smaller, made me try harder to lay low so I wouldn't stand out. Especially when you are young, you don't really get the concept of racism. So growing up I simply thought I was less than others, or that people generally didn't like me unless I became 'likable'. Now I feel exploited, angry… angry at those who make racist, sexist, and fetish-y comments thinking that they can do that to somebody who they feel is 'weaker' than them.

My initial thought was “wtf”, but it also wasn’t super aggressive. He wasn’t physically aggressive and there was a group of us so we all kind of just brushed it off

I was really angry and was lost for words.

Scared. I thought he was going to attack me.

At the time I felt embarrassed and ashamed to be the target of a joke because of my race.

To be honest, as I was far away from family and I was teenager, I felt myself it is my fault that I don’t look strong enough. I thought that people did abusive and racisim thing to me because I looked physically weak. And when I was 19, get used to living in NZ, I felt nothing about verbal violence but The experience of physical attack from drunken people was hard to recover. Never walked outside at night since then.