but what's happening at the moment, Villan, is that she doesn't want to rock the boat. As I implied before, she doesn't "want to be mistaken for someone who seeks to find offence in virtually everything she sees and hears." Because there are people who may think that "she needs to learn to distinguish between banter and something that is meant in a nasty way", and that she is over-sensitive, and they may exclude her from the group.

I think there are probably a lot of black people in her position - they are in largely white environments (like, say, the army?) where a kind of low-level culture of racism is tolerated. Things are said that may be offensive and upsetting to the recipient, but they don't want to become a social pariah, so they just laugh it off. And then the perpetrator thinks that what they've said is acceptable. And the culture carries on.

I think this is one facet of what's known as "institutionalised racism".