Me and my roommate in college come from Southeast Asia. I’m of Chinese descent with lighter skin and he is darker skinned, more indicative of Southeast Asian natives ie Indonesia, Thailand, Phillipines.
We went to college in Texas. While he was out with a bunch of our fellow countrymen, they got stopped because the cops thought they were “behaving suspicious” while driving. But quite obviously it’s because they looked Mexican. While waiting for one cop to search the vehicle, my friend put his hands in his pockets, and the cops immediately had their hands on their pistol holsters. HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM.
This was before 9/11. We both moved back home and found work here. Being a damn good engineer, he was given a contract job in Texas for a couple years, in the 2010s. He was asked by his bosses if he wanted to stay on for good, but he turned it down. Without elaborating, he told me, THINGS HAD GOTTEN WORSE.
As for me? Nothing much, just was called a COMMIE and asked where my little red book was. I think now they would shoot me.
When I went thru immigration, I made small talk about what my college’s Football team was up to that year. I HATED football. But my roomie was a fan and he always gave me a tl;dr I could recite in under a minute.
Holy hell I was always the fastest Asian guy thru foreign immigration at LAX.