Beginning to feel alienated in my mostly-white Master’s program

Ranting, please be kind or don’t comment at all.

I’m in the last stretch of my master’s program and am a quiet student, cheerful, but mostly keep to myself. Currently, it is only me and one other nonwhite (not Asian) student in my program, but last year there were at least 4-5 of us. It’s a very small program with small cohorts.

I did my undergrad at an extremely diverse R1 school before this and for the majority of my experience, experienced very little racism. I don’t think I even really thought about racial division or tension much at all while attending there.

I hit it off with my current master’s thesis advisor and accepted the offer. I was really excited at the prospective projects and connections. Overall academically, it has been a positive experience up until lately.

I only have one person I am really close with here, but over the last week, I realized they are racist. It started the other day when they casually dropped a slur “gookville” to my face. My jaw dropped because I never expected that from this person and they quickly said “sorry, that might be offensive to some people”. To me, white people don’t even KNOW that lesser-known racial slur unless you have like true racism in your veins, or are super educated on racism or something.

The other day, they hit it off with another white student in our program (they previously had tension between each other due to clashing political stances of conservative vs liberal views) because they were joking about how my professor really likes bringing in minorities as his grad students, and heavily implying that they (I guess we) are less competent/qualified.

That completely crushed my worldview. I didn’t realize that at this level of higher education, while on campus, that colleagues would be talking about this shit. Talking shit about their other colleagues like that when we’ve done nothing but be kind and helpful and supportive.

The other student doesn’t know that I know about this conversation, my “friend” told me about it and I DONT KNOW WHY?? My boyfriend thinks they are calling me “one of the good ones” (in the way racist people exonerate their token friends) but how could that conversation not be about me too if I am literally one of the two current minority students in the program under THAT specific professor they were teehee-ing about?

I am lost and heartbroken. If I take any action, they will all know that I reported it (I am the only one who would look guilty for reporting that kind of thing and am known to be close with one of the implicated people), and it could wreck me socially. I also think zero benefit would come out of it. I’ve toiled over all of the outcomes already. What are they going to do, require more DEI training? A racist won’t stop being racist because of a longer diversity training that they’re already half-assing and now paying attention to.

I’m not trying to burn bridges until I graduate because I am isolated enough and don’t want to create even more tension for myself when I have to defend in front of the whole department and my colleagues. That would be stupid and shooting myself in the foot with no good consequences.

I am simply venting because yes, I knew this happens in the corporate world, I know this happens a lot everywhere, but I never expected to experience such disgusting and shitty behavior in academia because of its reputation and I am appalled and angry that there’s really no course of action I can take right now that wouldn’t disadvantage me. I’m angry there’s no consequence for people like them. I will be reporting this after I defend and am done with these program, and am distancing myself now from these people, but it doesn’t shake the feeling of being alienated and feeling “othered” around these people anymore and I’m fed tf up.