I've had professors and teachers go harder on me at exams and with grades, because they assumed since I am Thai, speaking Mandarin would be a given. For some of them it just went over their heads that it's two completely different languages. They think I had an advantage over my white classmates, and would mark me down for one mispronunciation when my white classmates can hardly say a full proper sentence, and still get higher grades even though they speak with the vocabulary of a 4 year old.

I know this land. I'm tangata whenua. It's in my blood. My name is te wai ote oranaganui, which means the legs of the river. I am the river and the river flows thru my bloodstream. Everyday I have white supremacists trying to take my identity away from me.

"I was once prevented from boarding an aircraft bc I made white ppl uncomfortable. "