TIFU by trying (and failing) to call out something racist.

Hi, so some background here. This happened a few years ago, its haunted me in my sleep, my waking thoughts and tortured me relentlessly for months after this happened and still does from time to time. Yes I am white as you may have guessed, and AFAB. (Assigned female at birth) Since its been a few years Ive come to better terms with it and would rather look at it as an embarrassingly stupid story than something I take to my grave.

In highschool there was a group of students selected/nominated by teachers every year for being leaders within their classes and would be invited to a "leadership retreat" in the mountains with the other students nominated and some school staff. Myself and a friend of mine were simultaneously selected for this trip our sophmore year. Me and my friend (who I'll call G) decided to share a dorm room for the few days we'd be there. The leadership retreat was mostly group bonding activities, as well as giving us insightful problem solving activities. We were all split up into groups of 4, (we didnt get to choose groups) for all the activities for the few days. Me and G were in different groups and when we would get back to our dorm rooms we would converse and catch up with what shenanigans our individual groups got into.

Now here's the thing, G is black, and we went to a predominantly white school. It just so happened that the group G was in also happened have a few of the middle class borderline racist white kids. You know the ones. And one night while me and G were conversing and chatting, she mentioned to me that a few of our classmates had made.. odd comments directed at her and another friend of ours. (also black, we'll call her A) In particular they compared how 'similar' they looked. Even going as far as to say they could be sisters or twins. For refrence A is much taller than G, think maybe an entire foot taller. G has sharper features and a more pointed look than A does, who has softer jawline, nose and rounder eyes. (You might wonder why I go into such detail, Im an artist and I pay close attention to my friends and families facial features.) In short, the only similarity G and A have physically is that theyre both dark skinned beautiful black women. In their own ways of course. I cringe and say thats a weird thing to say and we move on.

That night me and G are talking and the topic gets brought up again about the same girls from before. This conversation lasts until 2am in the morning of me and G talking about our experiences of race and racism from two opposite ends of the spectrum. We end up agreeing on lots of things, how microaggressions can be shrugged off, what people do and do not realize is racist in nature or being. (Aunt jemima for example.) All in all its a nice conversation and judgement free from each other, G mentioned that it was really nice to have an open conversation about this with a white person. In the moment I felt honored, I felt as if I had really reached a new level of empathy and understanding that would have taken my ancestors out.

The next morning after group breakfast we all met up in a conference room of sorts. Throughout the trip each of our individual groups had 'scavenger hunts' that featured taking pictures of nature, finding someone (who was willing to take a photo) wearing 'xyz', etc etc. This was the moment each of our groups presented our findings as like almost an online journal of sorts to mark our end of the trip. There was a section in this where we could take a picture of two people 'twinning.' One group was going (neither mine or G's group) and they had participated in the 'twinning' section. When I looked over I saw that they had taken the only black girl in their group and put her next to a picture (that looked like they found online) of G. I shoot G a look of like "Did you sign up for this?" and then looked back at the picture, then G with an overconfident smirk that was like "Jeez... this again? Losers." G looks at me confused and when the entire presentation ends comes up to me and I ask her if she agreed to it and what'd she think of it. G asks me 'what I was getting at.' I tell her that obviously the group has taken a photo of her once again and compared it to another black girl who didnt even look like her. She looks at me weird and guarded and shakes her head, telling me "no.. that wasnt her."

Here's the meat and potatoes of this story.. I cannot explain the phenomenon that happened, unless there was some dormant racism lying in wait in my brain that made me see G in the original image, or if I was so overconfident and ignorant that once look made me think it was my friend. But when I asked to see the twin image again and looked back at it, I was horrified. The photo was so clearly the girl in their group standing beside of a POSTER (not a selfie like I had originally thought) of another young black girl. What makes it worse is that the girl in the poster looked absolutely nothing like my friend and did resemble the girl in the group. I tried to explain myself but ultimately gave up and profusely apologized. I knew I had fucked up and could never explain myself that would make me seem less racist or stupid. I still cannot explain such a phenomenon other than I got too cocky and confident that I finally beat the white ignorance in my own persona that I fell flat on my ass when I tried to be an ally. If anyone with a psychology degree or any knowledge could explain this phenomenon please tell me I still periodically lie awake at night knowing how badly I embarrassed and fucked myself over.

I havent talked much to G since then and we dont keep in touch now that we're graduates. I hope shes doing okay and doesnt judge me too harshly since then...

TL;DR: OP (hi thats me...) Tried to be an ally to their friend by pointing out what they thought was racist and ended up being racist themselves to their friend in the most fucked up and embarrassing way possible. It keeps me awake at night and I am ashamed but I tell the whole story to try to lessen the embarrassment.