You repress your feelings and wonder why you’re lonely. You don’t realize how much they impact your life until you know how to recognize them, I myself went through that too. It wasn’t until I learned more about my emotions that I truly felt happy, wanted. Repressing feelings doesn’t work, not in a social setting, because you repress all your emotions, even the positive ones.
They were, this is classic “It’s not racism until they’re racist against me” development. It wasn’t racist when it was against only Mexicans/blacks tho.