Maybe the cabin crew could find them another seat? Probably not, the flight was going to be busy. Well, I'm not going to sit next to her. Well, I don't want to sit next to her either. This was all within earshot: "They couldn't have possibly thought I couldn't hear them." Shannon stared resolutely ahead and pretended she hadn't heard. Sometimes she responds but occasionally it's easier to imagine it hasn't happened. Eventually, the husband sat next to her and pretended she didn't exist, all the way back to Brisbane. Shannon is black. African-American. One of her grandparents is Native American. From Texas. She says that racism exists in the US, of course, but at least there is a serious and difficult public conversation about it. Black lives matter. And even though, yep, someone will always answer 'all lives matter', that's the beginning of the conversation right there. But here in Australia, she says that conversation is just beginning. And one of those conversations is with her husband. Glen, 210 centimetres, fair, green eyes, always knew his beloved country was racist but he just did not realise it was so bad. It never happened when he was around. Well, of course it wouldn't.

"It's like he gives me a [free] pass," she says with what would pass for a wry smile if the whole story wasn't heartbreaking to hear. At first Glen didn't believe it, she says. Didn't want to believe it. Surely episodes like those on the plane were a one-off? "He had a hard time believing I was being treated this way. But the more it happened the closer it got. It's almost like a fire: the closer you are, the more you feel the heat, the more you feel the flames, the more urgent it is, the more it can touch your life." It's about the skin I'm in and no matter what you do, you are still always black first. "A lot of people are warm and kind and generous. And a lot of people aren't. That's the reality. I'm singled out for being black so I don't know what else you would call it. I know racism is such a hard word but there is a level of racism here that makes it uncomfortable to be black."

The big humiliations such as the plane incident occur every few months or so. But there are little things, what Shannon calls micro-aggressions, every day. Someone will clutch their shoulder bag more tightly. Or lock their door. Pull their kids away. Ignore her. Walk up to her as she browses in a shop and tell her as she examines something that 'you know, you have to pay for that'. Ignore her and make sure she knows she is being ignored. "I don't understand how you can treat someone as if they are so different to you when it's just skin. At a systematic level, I understand it; at a historic level, I understand it. There are many levels at which I get it. It's not as if I am naïve to the stuff that is behind it. But as person-to-person, I don't know how you walk up to someone and say something so cruel, so demeaning, so dehumanising, that discounts their personhood." Shannon says that Indigenous Australians are treated much worse. "It's not my lived experience but from what I see from the outside, it's significantly worse. It's different too because this is their country. I can't imagine it being your home and feeling so unwelcome, so undervalued, so unappreciated, stigmatised. That seems to me so much worse than the experience I have had."

And what of Glen's understanding now? "Being in a relationship and subsequently married to me brought him to the fire. It wasn't real to him before," she says. But it's not getting any easier in Australia and sometimes she is worried about what the future here will hold. "I'm still black. I wonder sometimes if people knew me, would they treat me this way. But the reality is it's not about me, it's about the skin I'm in and no matter what you do, whether you have a PhD, whether you are well-spoken or friendly, you are still always black first. "I'm black before I'm woman."