Thank you for sharing your experiences! It's especially interesting given how many different countries you've been in.

I wonder if you and others have also had different experiences because you draw the line either for certainty or for scale of prejudice at different levels? It seems difficult to believe that--even if you were unaware when it was happening--that you could have never received some slight negative prejudice at all. It's difficult to believe because people are constantly judging each other a little bit in all sorts of ways--she has a nice smile, his nose is squashed, their laugh is grating, etc....it doesn't result in dehumanization, just a little push on attitudes to be a bit more positive or negative, pending some more definitive interaction (like talking to the person).

But there's an argument to make that if we don't declare these things smileism, noseism, laughism, and so on, it doesn't make sense to describe race-triggered preference shifts of similar scale "racism" either. But if someone did call it racism and you didn't, they and you would have very different perspectives on whether they'd be treated in a racist way. Is this also something you've experienced, or is always misinterpretations of context (e.g. culture not race) and assuming the worst of people?