I went to an event this morning that's associated with the consultant's group I belong to. After the presentation, when most of the people were gone, one of the members asked me an intriguing question. It was "Have you been discriminated against while living here?"

My immediate response was "Yes", but then I asked him exactly what he meant. He said a few things that gave me an understanding of his question, and I started to try to answer it. I was somewhat lucky in that there was another black person there with me, so I didn't have to try to answer it alone.

What's interesting is that we both gave the same responses. In essence, we know we've been discriminated, and can pick out instances where it's been so overt that it was easy to determine. However, there are many more instances where things happen that one isn't really sure whether one is a victim of discrimination or just bad customer service. In other words, it's easy to know when you're being followed around a store, but it's much harder to tell when no one comes over to assist you when you're looking for information, or when you want to pay for something and can't find a cashier, sometimes for as long as 15 or 20 minutes in large department stores.

It's hard to capture, and it's obviously not across the board, but it can be mentally taxing, though, after so many years it's a much smaller degree, when one is trying to figure out whether they're being mistreated, so to speak, because of them, or because of someone else. It's hard to figure out if one doesn't get a job because someone else's qualifications are better, or because the employer didn't want to mess with the status quo.

Are we paranoid? Well, I had a new employer tell me once that he had to seriously consider whether or not to hire me because he wasn't sure how some of the company's clients would react in having me as their main contact. I know that was supposed to be a compliment, but it was disturbing to know that my qualifications, which were pretty good at the time, almost weren't enough to pull me through.

So, yes I've been discriminated against; I just couldn't detail all the "when's".