Albert Price, 53, Florida

Price was in a chain restaurant in Margate, Florida, when the assisted living facility where he’s a senior manager called his cell. He stepped outside briefly to take the call, but on returning, a bartender, server and the restaurant manager were hovering at his table, about to call police. “To them it was simply a black man skipping out on his check – for two damn draft beers,” said Price. He finds himself saying “excuse me” in public, “to let white people know I’m behind them, because I don’t want to surprise them, being 6ft 4in and black.”

Brianna Wilkins, 33, Texas

When Wilkins moved into her new home in Houston, neighbors called the police, saying she was breaking in. “We were moving our stuff in, we weren’t taking anything out,” she said. “We had to pull out our lease [to show them] and everything.” Soon after, it happened again. “We don’t dress up, we’re real basic, just wear regular clothes. They’re trying to say we look homeless, that people are coming here selling drugs. They call the police, call our landlord. We feel like we’re in prison in our own house,” she said.



Malika Bilal, 34, Washington DC

Bilal hasn’t forgotten a Fourth of July fireworks and picnic when she was in middle school in Chicago. Her family were piling into their station wagon afterwards, when a white man in a pickup rolled by, shouting: “Go back to your country, we don’t want you here.” Her mother wore a headscarf and it was unclear if the problem was race, religion or both. “Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between racism and what we now know as Islamophobia,” said Bilal, a journalist. Common micro-aggressions include store clerks speaking extra slowly, while other people question why she “talks white”. “It’s not always malicious,” she said. She tries to give the benefit of the doubt, but acknowledged that’s sometimes a coping mechanism.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andres Raygoza: ‘I have to keep a smile on my face to be professional.’

Andres Raygoza, 20, California

“I’ve had racist people while working in customer service,” said the movie theater assistant, who is also an intern at a youth radio and media non-profit program in Oakland. “They won’t want to be helped by me, or they come at me with a certain tone, I can feel aggression because of my color or my demeanor. I laugh it off.” While working as a barista in San Francisco, previously, some customers would behave uncomfortably around him for no obvious reason other than that he is Latino. “I have to keep a smile on my face to be professional,” he said. He recalls a white customer bringing a Confederate flag into the coffee shop.

Chiaunte’ Arnolie, 30, Louisiana

When she was meeting friends at a favorite New Orleans bar on her birthday, a bartender told Arnolie, a medical lab technician, there was a new policy – to collect an ID with a customer’s credit card when opening a tab. Arnolie handed over her ID, but noticed no one else arriving was asked for an ID with their credit card – and none of them was black. Another time, she was browsing wigs in a beauty store, but was rushed along by a sales associate. Leaving, discouraged, another associate yelled at her to stop, accusing her of stealing the wig she had been wearing when she walked in. The first sales associate vouched for her innocence, and the second said: “Well, you know, you people steal a lot, so excuse me. I’m sorry.”

Cameron Belton, 26, Texas

Belton acknowledges past felony convictions but is keen to move on. However, the Houston musician says he’s overly scrutinized. “I walked to the store, came back and there were cops in front of my apartment. I guess [they] thought, ‘Oh, this guy sells drugs right here’,” despite his being newly moved in. Belton said police ask him to take his shirt off in public. “Going to the store they might roll up alongside me, leaving the store they might pull me over – seems like just to pull me over,” he said. He’s regularly quizzed at length, he said. “I’ve been with a white friend of mine, pulled over. They never searched the white friend’s car.”



Interviews by Tom Dart, Jamiles Lartey, Sabrina Siddiqui, Sam Levin and Richard Luscombe