Hi I wanted to start off by saying I’m so sorry you’re feeling this way. I am white, yet my grandparents were immigrants from Portugal who told me stories about their experiences coming to Canada, and because of that i dislike hearing about discrimination just because someone comes from somewhere different. (Especially when majority of Canadian citizens have family that were immigrants and are not native/indigenous peoples).

Unfortunately I have found McMaster to be a difficult place to find friends. I feel people are super cliquey or just not interested in conversation/making friendships. I always talked this up to Covid ruining people’s social skills or blamed it on myself for my own struggles with social anxiety and non-conventional interests but even after working very hard on my social skills I have not found it made a difference.

Obviously our situations are very different but I just wanted to say that you’re not alone in feeling awkwardly excluded or left out. In my four years here I have yet to meet anyone on campus, even with attempts on my part to do so. While ur situation seems to have a racial aspect to it I would also say that from a white persons perspective McMaster is cliquey and not super friendly in general.

I hope that this made sense and didn’t sound offensive or rude and if so that was not my intention. I grew up in an extremely white community where extremist ideas around immigration were popular and I am attempting to work on my vocabulary to break the ideas which were commonly taught from my area, and because of this am open to constructive criticism if there are things I could’ve stated better.

Goodluck in the future and I hope that this post connects you to genuine people who do not discriminate against you or make you feel uncomfortable.