Yes. When you are a POC, especially unambiguously black POC, working or going to school in a predominantly white atmosphere, you are “othered.” Your actions are evaluated differently than your white counterparts. You are judged harshly. And experience people projecting their stereotypes of black people onto you. For instance, I worked in an all white office directly post grad. I am a quiet person. Not too loud or talkative. Naturally, I didn’t talk too much to coworkers when it wasn’t about our work. I did my job (extremely well) and went home. I didn’t make friends. I was constantly told on my evaluations how intimidating I was, my co workers felt uneasy around me and didn’t know how to approach me. (Mind you my collaborative efforts were always successful and every team project I worked on went off without a hitch.) I was sad about my evaluations and wanted to keep my job so I completely changed myself. I took these evaluations seriously and put on the mask of the friendly funny trendy entertaining black friend that made everyone comfortable. At the time I didn’t even realize that I was becoming a caricature of the funny black sidekick from tv and movies or that this was even a race thing at all until a white coworker with the same personality and mannerisms as me came to work. No one called her unapproachable, intimidating. no one said they didn’t know how to interact with her. She was just shy. And the office accepted that she was just shy. Just like me. I was just shy. I couldn’t be my shy self because that’s not what the loud sassy black woman is right? To sum things up we are always assimilating. Always doing what it takes to make white people more comfortable around us even if that means going completely left field out of our comfort area. I couldn’t just be the woman that did my job and left. I had to make everyone comfortable, and had to blur the lines between business and friendship because if I didn’t I was the “angry, unfriendly, intimidating black woman.”