There's a very wide variety of microaggressions and exclusionary behaviors that all different kinds of BIPOC have endured while attending PWIs (predominately white institutions). But one thing I'm sure we can all agree on is the impact it had on us, not only as kids trying to discover ourselves and learn how to live in this world, but also as adults who had to process it and the woes it came with.
So, I wanted to create a space where BIPOC could speak freely about the behaviors they experienced. I asked BIPOC of the BuzzFeed Community to tell me their stories of the microaggressions and exclusionary behavior they dealt with while attending PWIs. And even after experiencing many of these behaviors myself, these stories didn't fail to make my blood boil:
1. "I attended parochial school in Amish country; it doesn't get whiter than that. I was bullied right, left, and center. The first day of school after summer vacation, kids would run up and grab my arm, squealing about how they were catching up to me — these same kids in January wouldn't be caught dead standing next to me and my dark skin. They would put tinsel in my hair at Christmas time and laugh because it wouldn't fall out and I couldn't feel it, so it was there all day."
2. "A white student got mad that I didn't tell her or let her watch me take out my braid extensions. Another told me I only scared her because I'm Black. This was my first semester of uni."
3. "Here's a minor one that demonstrates the kind of microaggressions we face. I was a Resident Advisor in the largest dorm (over 2000 residents) on one of the largest campuses in the US. The office staff controlled the music that played in the common lobby. Inevitably, the all-white office staff picked one of the area's hard rock stations to play because, 'That's what the majority of students want to hear.'"
4. "I could write a whole dissertation on this. In Georgia, a kid came to school with a shirt that had slaves picking cotton on it. They said it was 'dixie pride.'"
5. "My first month of school, my roommate got assigned to write a pro-slavery speech for her history class. It was a historical re-enactment class, and she would get a higher grade if she argued successfully for the benefits of slavery. I found this out when she started rehearsing it in our room. I genuinely thought it was a joke at first, especially since it was 2020 and a few months after George Floyd's death."
6. "I am mixed; white, Puerto Rican, and Black. My skin is white, but my features are not. I have dark curly hair, black eyebrows, and dominant Latinx features. I have not had many microaggressions towards me because I pass as white, and I know that makes me privileged in many ways. When I was growing up though, that was not the case, especially at the schools I went to that were PWI."
"At my old school, I was considered 'darker' than the other kids, and I was told that I would be way prettier if I just straightened my curls every day. Once, while I was in high school, a guy told me he would date me if I straightened my hair every day because 'I only look hot when it's straight.' Girls would tell me that I looked like Mia from The Princess Diaries before her makeover, and I just needed a makeover moment to be pretty. I love my hair and that it's curly. I am proud to be mixed. People still make comments like that, and now I fight back about it."
—Anonymous
7. "A student was exposed as a grand wizard via Instagram. It was complete with a swastika tattoo, a rifle, and white supremacist flyers around campus. There were protests, and I'm pretty sure he was banned from the campus."
8. "I had wanted to join the swim team my freshman year of high school but had missed try-outs by a few days. One of my 'friends,' who was already on the team, told me he would go talk to the coach with me and put a good word in on my behalf. When talking to the coach, he told him that he should put me on the team because I would obviously be a good swimmer because I was a 'wetback,' and the coach just laughed."
9. "While I was in college, I experienced a lot of racism and prejudice for the first time in my life as an African American woman. One time that stands out in particular was when the host of a student-led show made this statement in regards to Affirmative Action: 'It's up to you to find those kids that shouldn't be here and are at the school only because of Affirmative Action. Proven methods here include lynching, tarring and feathering, and cross-burning.' The experiences I endured at this institution led me to write an article regarding racism at higher-ranked institutions."
10. "'But you're not, like, really Native.' What numerous people said to me while living in small-town Illinois. Some were even my friends."
11. "'You're so well spoken!' Which is always said with a tone of shock. And then I'm immediately asked what my parents do for a living, which is followed by MORE shock when I say they're college professors with doctorates, and THEN they ask me if I'm adopted..."
12. "I had a class with this one professor who would get me and the one other Black girl mixed up a few times, which kind of frustrated me a bit. While I understand that for professors who may be teaching a lot of students, it's challenging to remember everyone's names, but it is annoying to be mistaken for someone else, especially since the other girl wore a pretty noticeable hair accessory every day while I never wore anything in my hair."
—Anonymous
13. "I was in honors English class with 'Mr. P' my sophomore year of high school. Towards the end of the year, we were selecting classes for the following school year, and for my English class, I signed up for honors English 11. In order for that to be finalized, I had to get a signature of approval from my current English teacher. Mr. P told me, the only Latino student in a class full of white students, that he didn’t think I should continue on to honors English during my junior year because 'it may be too challenging.' But I told him I wanted to, and after much argument, he begrudgingly signed my form. I ended up being one of the best students in my junior English class."
14. "I’m adopted, so much of my experience was just people gaslighting me about my adoption experience. Living somewhere that is considered a sundown town, I was the token person to show 'we're ok, we have a couple Black kids' (we were all adopted). They also tried to convince me that if I had grown up around other Black people, I would likely be pregnant at a young age, addicted to drugs, or in prison."
"Also, white people would joke about me being the 'whitest Black person' or would touch me or my hair without my permission and sometimes without my knowledge. And they called me 'sensitive' when I would call people out for saying the n-word. They wouldn't believe me or they would blame me for the micro- and macro-aggressions that were committed against me."
—Anonymous
15. "I was referred to as 'Black pretty girl,' Black crush,' and 'the only Black girl they would be willing to f*ck.'"
16. "I was the only Latina at this company in Hollywood, where all my coworkers were white. I'm from Compton, but when they would ask me where I was from, I would just say LA, because I got sick of hearing, 'OH MY GOD, HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANYONE GET SHOT? HAVE YOU SEEN A DRIVE-BY?' and it was regularly done by non-Black and non-Brown POC."
"Eventually, I began to say I was from Compton and had to educate them a lot to make sure that they saw the good aspects of the hood rather than confirm the stereotypes that are always paraded by the news and media. While some were open to learning a little more about how it was for me growing up in Compton and were open to challenging their preconceived notions of what it is, I still had coworkers that held on to the fact that I was from Compton. Not only was I their token Latina, but I then became their token coworker from Compton."
—Anonymous
17. "For me, pretty much all kids and teachers were good for the most part, but just the whitewashing and white glorification of history is what I always had problems with. Like, the majority of 'good' things we learned about were from mostly white countries or empires, while we learned mostly negative things about Brown and Black ones. It is also hardly ever acknowledged that most bad things that happened to Black and Brown places were done by white people because they wanted to push their own beliefs and steal."
And finally, ending with this one was a bit personal. As someone with a very unique name, people don't understand how demeaning it is when someone "decides" they aren't going to learn how to say your name. I've gone through the same situations as this person, and even found that the same people who said my name was "too hard" EASILY learned how to pronounce the most difficult European last names you could ever hear. "What's in a name?"... well, everything:
18. "As someone with a not so common name, early years were made difficult. Somehow it was mine and my family's fault for making other people have to work to learn or say a new name. This happened everywhere, teachers, bosses, peers. Like my name only has six letters, what the hell? One day this older white woman asked me, 'Don't you have an easier name or a nickname?' And as a teen at that time, I responded snarkily, 'No!' And that beautiful memory has not left me."
Do you have any stories you would like to tell as a BIPOC who attended PWIs? Don't be afraid to share your stories and their impact in the comments!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity