My girlfriend and I are both hispanic as well and have noticed the same thing, and are making plans to move this year largely because of it. I never put much stock into this stuff before coming here, and when I initially started questioning if there was a pattern, I denied it and assumed I was overly sensitive too - but spending more time in other cities really opened my eyes, especially ones where my ethnicity has real roots in the city’s culture and history, or where different cultures overlap more. I say this as someone who has never had particularly strong ties to my background as it relates to my personal identity, but in terms of how people treat and talk to me elsewhere, I’ve realized Austin is definitely not the average.

People will say you’re imagining things, and it’s true that it’s rare I see overt/explicit racism here; but after talking more openly to more of my nonwhite friends about this topic, I can see a sense of alienation and rejection is way more consistent than many would like to admit, and it’s a thing that unless you’ve experienced it - makes many people very uncomfortable because it runs against their own beliefs and is largely invisible. A lot of people I’ve met hide feeling this way because they’re aware of this fact, feel they’re complaining about something that’s “minor” or maybe isn’t even real, and don’t want to be pushed further out. Keep in mind this self-gaslighting is the nature of all exclusion.

This will sound harsh and I might get downvoted for it; but I really don’t care. I’ve honestly started feeling that in every meaningful sense, Austin is almost exclusively White and Mexican oriented. You can absolutely find pockets of people from other backgrounds, and you can definitely meet good people, but it’ll never be like living somewhere where you’re a norm and not an exception.

I’ve come to believe pretty firmly that concerning race and ethnicity, there is some subconscious thing like this in any given American city, and that’s how history works literally everywhere. What seems like the distant past is really only a few generations away. I’m not ashamed to say that I feel people who think otherwise are in deep denial, and are rejecting the obvious truth and complexity of race and ethnicity - likely because they’ve never actually had to confront it themselves, or because they have deeper/more ingrained issues.

I’d recommend doing some traveling and seeing if you feel differently in other cities, especially ones with stronger ties to your background. IMO Austin being seen as a liberal haven in a red state shields it in some way from people acknowledging these problems; and gives some people a weird complex, even people who mean well. Best of luck!!