I completely understand her perspective and the only thing I have in common with her is I'm a minority in a Western nation. I'm in a different country, with a different racial background and it makes complete sense.

If you're really coming at this from a place of good faith then I'll explain it to you. Racism is not some bit of name-calling or realising that humans come in several shades. Racism as us PoC understand it is institutional. It's structural. It says that white people are better than everyone else.

She wasn't "suppressing her blackness" by not telling her flatmates what movies or music she liked, no it is whatever behaviours and/or cultural practices that white people have decided is outside the norm. As an example I've been given shit for speaking in my mother's language and I've been given shit for eating rice. How often have you at problems with other people for speaking english or eating a potato? I mean it should be considered innocuous but a lot of white people managed to have a problem with it.

You said you moved from a mostly white school because of the lack of diversity. So you recognise people from other backgrounds will probably behave differently. What you don't get is those different backgrounds and behaviours aren't always tolerated by mainstream (read: white) society.

The level of our acceptance in a lot of circumstances depends on how "white" we act. I have a "white" name so that's one point in my favour. I don't have a "foreign" accent so that's another point. The minute I do anything "ethnic" then I can see points being deducted by the look on white people's faces.

You seem to be under this impression that we're not being true to ourselves or not spreading our wings or some other Hallmark platitude. No, we attenuate ourselves out of necessity, that's what the writer was doing by not discussing racial politics with her roommate. Her being as "black" as she wants isn't going to fix racism. The only thing that it would do is alienate her from a good number of white people.