55: The waiter thought she was “staff”

My family and I went to France on holiday with close family friends when our children were younger. The mother of this other family, one of my closest friends, was born in Sri Lanka and moved to the UK as a child. She is supremely articulate, educated, talented and skilled in many areas and over the past 20 years has held powerful and influential jobs in the education, health and voluntary sectors. We were staying in rural France and one night, all went out to a restaurant together. I was horrified when my friend was shown to a table at the side of the main table where we were all sitting. It transpired that the waiter thought that she was our nanny, and was therefore treating her as "staff". We quickly left the restaurant and went to find a different one. For my friend, this was just another in a long line of micro-aggressions, but for me, it was a stark reminder that for some people, colour is an immediate signifier of someone's "place" in society. A few years later, the same friend came to stay with me in my home town in the middle of the Cotswolds. This time, we experienced a different kind of racism. We were in an outdoor seating area of a cafe and an elderly man walked up to my friend and said "You are lovely. Welcome to our town". He had seen someone who looked "different" from the norm for that part of the UK, and had purposefully come over to offer a word of welcome out of kindness. My friend was very gracious and thanked him, but I was extremely uncomfortable and embarrassed. It seemed churlish to take offence at what the elderly man had said, as it was obvious that he was very well-intentioned, so I didn't respond myself, but I suppose what was underlying it again was the fact that my friend was seen as being different.