Some of these stories are from http://www.microaggressions.com/
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Growing up, my city has been called Chan Marino rather than San Marino because there are "so many Chinese people here". Unlike a lot of Asian people in my city who are my age, I can't speak Japanese, Cantonese, or Mandarin. I just wasn't raised to speak those languages. In school, I did not feel like there were that many Asian people though, and my friends were mainly White. They were and some still are amazing friends, so I didn't really face any microaggressions when I was young. I'd get weird stares from strangers if I walked around in a dress, but that didn't bother me. In seventh grade and eighth, my younger brother and I were two of the only three Asian people in our school (K-8th grade). Fast forwarding to my summer ingoing my freshmen year, I have always had loving friends and family who accept me for who I am. Then, I started going to an all-girls school, which also happens to be a boarding school. Note that nearly all of the boarding students are from some part of China. I was walking around my new school's gym looking for friends and trying to make new ones. In that day alone, I was asked this question about three or more times, "What part of China are you from?". My mind was full of frustration, but I kindly responded, "I'm not from China, I live here in San Marino, California." They all said, "Well you live on campus but *pronunciates slower* what part of China are you from?". I couldn't believe my ears, but I thought it was just misunderstandings. I said, "I was actually born and raised here in San Marino, California. I'm a day student." All I got as a response was, "Oh well, where did you learn your English from?" As you can see, I did not find these conversations the best, but luckily they ended. I figured these questions were unintentionally offensive, but I wasn't even believed when I said that I was American-born. It's so easy for people to judge a book by its cover.
Once this lady came up to me and my friend at the park. She handed us her necklace because it had a knot in it, and she was like, "You people are good at math problems"... because we were both Asian.
For the past year, I have been dealing with a group of classmates who’ve taken it to themselves to bully me, which has taken the form of both microaggressions and very clear-cut hostile behaviors. With that said, before the following events had happened, this group of peers had already made it a point to make my life a living hell. It was a regular day. After school, as per usual, I called my boyfriend. We will call him Tommy. It had been a week since I had asked him to my school’s homecoming/fall dance, and it had previously seemed that he was very excited to go. However, that day, he didn’t seem so happy. He was unlike himself, and I had a strong suspicion that he had heard that group of kids saying something rude about me once again. Instead, he shared that the leader of the group-- let’s call her Stacy-- had told him that a kid in our friend group, Steve, was sad that I had asked Tommy to the dance. Tommy simply felt, from this single rumour, that Steve was interested in me romantically and that I didn’t actually want to go to the dance with him. This was clearly insane considering that Tommy is my boyfriend and that Steve had told me that he had a crush on someone else. Regardless, I approached Steve and told him. At this, he was literally laughing out loud for two main reasons: 1) he didn’t like me and 2) Stacy wasn’t his friend so even if he did have a problem with Tommy’s and my relationship, he wouldn’t have told her. A day passes, and the whole situation became sort of a joke. The “rumour” was clearly a ploy to upset Tommy or to harm our relationship. At the end of the day, as per usual, Steve and I were walking to fencing practice. We had run into another boy in our group of friends. The two had taken it upon themselves to chase me around school for about 15 minutes. By the time I got to fencing practice, I was completely out of breath. Perhaps this was where the more “micro aggressive” actions suddenly became very aggressive. As I came in, Stacy’s friend, Parker, made it a point to make a comment about my being out of breath, suggesting that Steve and I had done something sexual. I came home feeling really upset. This paired with the rumour that Stacy had spread made me feel that others considered me some type of slut simply for having friends that are guys. At this point, I decided to talk to Parker about his comment, as he was my friend in middle school. I told him about the rumour and how his comment made me extremely uncomfortable. Despite sitting at the same table with Stacy every day, he claimed he didn’t know anything about what was said nor did he mean for the comment to have any sexual connotation. He pretended that we were all best friends, but something strange happened after. All the rumours that had started about me and Steve suddenly stopped, as did the sexual comments. The group temporarily stopped feeding weird lies to Tommy, I suspect because they realized that I could potentially file a formal complaint to the school given how I felt about the situation. Since then, the bullying has escalated. Stacy continues to make fun of me to her friends right in front of me about my study habits and severe migraines, flirt with my boyfriend, and talk trash about me to him; all the while, she is friendly while talking with me directly and pretends that we are good friends.