I’m still shaken. I’m still sitting here with all of this heaviness in my chest, trying to make sense of what happened, trying to put words to that weird mix of fear, disgust, anger, sadness, and disappointment that hit me all at once. I don’t even know how to begin unraveling the knot this left in my stomach. All I know is that something really unsettling just happened to me and my mom, and even though it came out of nowhere, even though it was random, even though it was so absurd that part of me wants to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it, the truth is it hurt. It hurt in a way I didn’t expect. It hurt in a way I hoped I would never have to feel so directly. It hurt in a way I honestly wasn’t prepared for, even though I’ve spent my entire life knowing that eventually, eventually, something like this would happen.
We were just standing on the platform, me and my mom, minding our own business. It was a normal day, a normal moment, nothing even remotely tense or strange about it. Just another day in New York. People waiting for trains, the usual noise, the usual shuffle, the usual sense of all of us moving through our own little bubbles without paying too much attention to anyone else. And then this guy. This random dude. Someone I had never seen before in my life. Someone who, frankly, will probably never cross my path again. He suddenly started in with my mom. For no reason. No provocation. No buildup. Just out of nowhere, like he had been waiting for a target and decided it would be her.
At first I didn’t even understand what was happening. My brain did that thing it does when something unexpected happens, that slight delay, that moment where your mind tries to take the pieces it’s seeing and fit them into a frame that makes sense. Except nothing made sense. This guy wasn’t having a bad day in a way you could read on his face. He wasn’t muttering to himself like someone in crisis. He wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t lost. He wasn’t confused. He was just confrontational. Aggressive. Ready. Like he needed a fight to validate something inside of himself that he didn’t know how to name.
And he went after her. My mom. My fucking mom. The woman who raised me, the woman who has always tried to be kind, who does everything she can to stay out of trouble, who doesn’t like conflict, who never tries to pick fights or bring attention to herself. And he just leaned into her, pushing her with his words, getting in her space, trying to provoke her. And I felt that split second of panic that you feel when you realize you might have to protect someone you love. That instinctive spark of adrenalin, that alertness that comes with thinking, Oh shit, is something about to happen? Am I about to get dragged into something? Am I about to have to fight someone? It’s that primal, pure instinct. But it’s also fear. And it’s also anger.
When he started turning toward me, that’s when the dread hit. Because you can handle someone coming at you — it sucks, but you handle it. But someone going after your family? That’s different. That’s worse. That shakes you in a way nothing else does. And then he said it. That four-letter slur against Hispanics. The one I won’t type, the one I will not give space on this page, the one that people pretend is “not that bad” but has always, always carried the sting of being reduced to something dirty, something lesser, something other. He said it with spite. He said it with intention. He said it with that specific tone of someone who wants to hurt you and knows exactly which word will do it.
And then, as if the irony wasn’t already dripping from the sky, he followed it up with: “I’m a minority too.” Just like that. Almost as if he thought it excused something. Almost like that was supposed to make the insult okay. Almost like he was saying, “See? I can call you this because we’re both in the struggle.” And that, honestly, just twisted the knife even more. Because at that point, this wasn’t just about anger. It wasn’t just about confrontation. It wasn’t just about some random guy trying to puff up his chest. It wasn’t even just about fear. It became about something much deeper, something uglier, something that hits in a different place when you’re a minority yourself and you’re used to thinking of “racism” as something that comes from the outside, from the dominant group, from the people who historically held systemic power.
This came from another minority. That’s when it landed differently. That’s when it got complicated. That’s when everything in me started spiraling into that uncomfortable space where you start asking yourself questions you don’t want to ask.
Was this racism? Was this prejudice? Was this just a hateful person being hateful? Does it matter? Should it matter? Am I supposed to pretend it hits softer because the person saying it wasn’t white? Am I supposed to minimize my hurt because of some academic distinction between racism and prejudice? Am I supposed to categorize this moment in some clean, sterile way that doesn’t match the mess of what I actually felt inside?
Because here’s the thing: I get the argument. I understand it. I understand the frameworks. Minorities don’t have systemic racial power. Racism is about systems. Prejudice is interpersonal. Racism requires institutional force behind it. Prejudice does not. I’ve heard all of it, and honestly, I agree with most of it in the broader, structural, sociological sense. But that’s the thing — that’s the academic framework, the clean-theoretical framework, the kind of definition you use when you’re analyzing society, not when you’re standing on a train platform being called a hateful slur by someone who knows exactly what they’re doing.
Because when minorities are prejudiced against other minorities, it may not be backed by systemic power, but it still functions as racism in a broader sense. It still carries the weight of racism. It still perpetuates the messaging of racism. It still validates the ideas used by racists. It still enforces the divisions that white supremacy thrives on. It still does the work for the people who want minorities to despise each other. It still helps normalize and spread the same kinds of hatred that have been used against all of us for generations.
Even if the person didn’t have systemic power, he still used the tools of racism. He still inflicted the wound of racism. He still drew from the same well of hateful stereotypes and slurs that have been used to dehumanize Hispanic people for decades. And in that moment, I wasn’t thinking about sociology or power dynamics or academic categorization. I wasn’t thinking, “Well technically this is prejudice, not racism.” I wasn’t thinking about what race he was. I wasn’t thinking about him at all, honestly. I was thinking about how those words felt in my chest. I was thinking about how I suddenly felt smaller. Vulnerable. Exposed. Like someone had peeled a layer off of me I didn’t even know was there. It wasn’t just a word. It was a blow.
So you know what? I’m calling it racism. I’m calling it what it felt like. I’m calling it what it was in practice, regardless of whatever neat categories people like to stick these things into. Because those words came from the same place all racism comes from: hate, division, the desire to other someone, the desire to degrade someone based on who they are and what they look like. And even if it didn’t come from someone with institutional power, it still caused harm. It still left a mark. It still lingered in my head hours later. It still sits in my chest as I write this.
And honestly? I feel so fucking shook. I feel hurt. I feel rattled. I feel like part of me always knew this day would come — the day I’d experience this directly, intentionally, unmistakably. But the fact that I expected it doesn’t make it less painful. The fact that I wasn’t surprised doesn’t make it feel any less violating. The fact that I knew, statistically and socially, that eventually someone was going to spit that word at me someday doesn’t make the sting any softer. There’s a first time for everything, I guess. And this was my first time experiencing racism so openly, so personally, so unambiguously.
And the truth is, it leaves you feeling vulnerable. That’s the part people don’t talk about enough. It leaves you feeling like your existence is suddenly exposed in a way you didn’t consent to. It leaves you replaying the moment over and over again, trying to analyze what you could have done differently, whether you should have said more, whether you should have said less, whether you should have walked away sooner, whether you should have stood your ground harder. It’s like a loop in your head that you can’t stop revisiting because some part of you feels violated and your brain doesn’t know how to file that moment, doesn’t know where to put it, doesn’t know how to move on from it yet.
And it leaves you thinking about community too. About solidarity. About the kind of world we’re living in. Because when hate comes from outside your group, you expect it. It sucks, but you expect it. You know the script. You know the shape of that kind of racism. You’ve been warned about it your whole life. But when it comes from someone who should have been part of that web of solidarity, someone who should have understood the struggle in some way, it leaves a different kind of wound. It leaves confusion. It leaves disappointment. It leaves this hollow place where trust used to sit.
And maybe that’s why it hurts so much. Maybe that’s why I’m still shaking it off. Because this wasn’t just about one guy. This wasn’t just about one moment. This was about something larger — the realization that hate can come from anywhere, that prejudice can grow in any heart, that pain doesn’t discriminate in its direction, that division is so deeply ingrained in our society that even people who should be standing together sometimes turn on each other.
Maybe that’s also why I’m writing this. Because I don’t want this to sit inside me like a bruise nobody sees. I don’t want this to fester quietly. I don’t want this to become another one of those stories I never tell because it’s easier to pretend it didn’t happen. Because it did happen. And it hurt. And it shook me. And I’m allowed to say that. I’m allowed to name it. I’m allowed to feel it. I’m allowed to process it in my own way, on my own terms, without worrying about whether someone online is going to argue definitions with me.
All I know is this: in that moment, the world felt smaller. Harsher. Colder. And I felt more alone than I expected to feel when I was standing next to my own mother. That’s the part I keep returning to. That’s the part that stings. And maybe tomorrow it won’t feel so raw. Maybe in a week it won’t feel so sharp. Maybe in a month it’ll just be another memory I carry. But today? Today it’s still too fresh. Today it still hurts. Today I’m still trying to breathe through the tension it left in my body. Today I’m still untangling the mix of fear and anger and sadness that slammed into me like a wave.
And I guess that’s the truth of it. The first time it happens, it still shakes you — even when you expected it, even when you were prepared for the possibility, even when you’ve lived your whole life knowing what could be waiting around any corner. It still hits. It still scars. It still unsettles something deep inside you. And I’m just trying to deal with that. I’m just trying to let myself feel it without minimizing it. I’m just trying to heal from something I didn’t ask for and didn’t deserve.
Maybe that’s all this post really is — a place to put that hurt so it doesn’t stay stuck in me. A place to acknowledge the weight of what happened. A place to say out loud that I’m tired of this world making us hurt each other, tired of the ways we inherit the violence of systems that want us all divided, tired of the ways pain travels between us like a contagion we can’t seem to stop. I wish that wasn’t the case. I wish today had been different. I wish people like him didn’t exist. I wish the world made more room for kindness, for patience, for empathy, for anything other than what I experienced today.
But this is the world we’ve got. And this was my first time staring that hate directly in the face. And it shook me. It really did.