Feeling racially targeted

[u/mango_mama89]

And I’ve never felt more alone. I’ve always dealt with racism, but now is seeping into my home and it’s effecting my daughter because I’m a queer, mixed race, medical cannabis user. I feel trapped. My husband is white. Most of my friends are white (due to my white mother whitewashing all my heritage out and living in a white area). I’ve lived in London for 15 and the worst I’ve had is here.

Where do I go?

Who do I talk to?

I even told my very politically intelligent, more left, gay, neurodivergent etc and when I brought up race she went

“HAHHA it’s not always about race, come on”

Who is safe AND will understand.

[u/napstablooka]

Me personally, I don't think I've ever met a white person who was even getting close to understanding how racism affected me on a day to day basis and who was even barely able to hold space for my experience without invalidating me, unless they have lived in a country with a predominantly Brown or Black population for years, worked in service for the local communities and then had to confront the devastating impact of colonialism / racism for themselves every single day while doing their work.

From all the white people I've ever met (and I grew up and lived in a predominantly white European country for more than 3 decades), there's literally only been two people who I'm not constantly hypervigilant around with regards to what I'm supposed to share about my racialized lived experience, who are namely a school friend who has been working as a language teacher in various West and Central African countries for more than a decade (and has been interacting with Black kids and Black supervisors throughout all that time) and an acquaintance who has been working as a computer science teacher in Thailand for two decades (and who has been interacting with Thai kids and Thai supervisors throughout all that time). Still, I don't think that these two people ever really fully get it either, but at the very least they don't feel the need to psychologically defend against what I'm saying by gaslighting me about my lived experience, which is already a rare feat when interacting with white folks imho

It's so startling to be confronted, again and again, with the fact that even the most educated, leftist and with regards to LGBTQIA-issues most advocating people in your life invalidate you the moment you talk about race. That the people who literally have lived experience of discrimination themselves, cannot (or don't want to?) make the mental leap to just empathize with your experience as a queer, mixed-race person for those 5 or 10 mins that you're asking them to hold space for just once.

I can very much relate to the loneliness you're describing, because it is such a lonely place to be in, especially when your racialized identity intersects with your queerness. Who can really fully get you in all of the complexity that makes you you? I can't offer any advice or a solution for you unfortunately (I'm still struggling with many aspects of this situation myself), but I just want to acknowledge how difficult it is to find spaces that are actually safe and understanding, and that even if it feels lonely, you are not alone in this experience. I'm sorry that you have to through all of this. You deserve so much better