Old Man Wants to Pick a Fight with Me.

Because I’m a racially ambiguous brown girl

kat.
Globetrotters
3 min readDec 4, 2022

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Photo by Steven Weeks on Unsplash

I have a track record of going to countries where I look like a local. It’s granted me the privilege of blending into crowds. An experience that I don’t get in the white suburbs of my hometown and other equivalents. Where I am the token POC. Sometimes racially profiled. Unfortunately, sometimes fetishized. Making me subjected to preconceived notions and stereotypes based on my skin color. Though these tribulations are now ingrained in my mind, they were not in my youth.

In 2015, I road-tripped around Midwest America.

There’s a small town in Nebraska founded by Swedish settlers called Stromsburg. It’s not a mystery why people of color make up a small portion of their demographic. I might as well have been Webster’s definition of an enigma there.

Stromsburgs’ population: 1171
97.3% White, 0.3% Asian

My visit was a pit stop for lunch at a diner on their main street. I caught an occasional stare from others who noted me as a newcomer and gave a nod of acknowledgment. There wasn’t a lot of commotion, only the occasional small-talk conversations were audible. It seemed easy enough to blend in. I shouldn’t have to explain myself, but for context, I was respectfully well-mannered, barely spoke, and a good tipper.

A few quiet moments of looking over the menu passed before I heard it. An older gentleman sitting behind me said, “it’s like we’re not even in America anymore….”

In a room of twelve white people, one Asian tore down his fabric ideal of a stars and stripes nation. When my coworkers asked what I did over the weekend, I could’ve said, “raising wiki statistics by 0.1%.”

Photo by Alex Jones on Unsplash

For someone so non-threatening, his tone implied a lot of malice.

I wasn’t afraid of an old man wheeling around an oxygen tank. We could have sparked a lively debate, but a lifetime of ignorant comments wouldn’t magically disappear if I had responded. I reminded myself that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It wasn’t me; it was him who was the problem. I was existing. I was eating fucking soup.

Those seemed like valid excuses to keep my head down and finish a meal. Cause he was already fighting a losing battle by aging quicker than me. Death could knock down his doors at any moment. Whereas I could ignore his commentary and drift to the next town. (Yet, due to my silence, he might continue to speak without consequence.)

I handled the situation for my self-interest, but I failed to give justice to those whose experience resembled mine. Now, I wonder if I was the bigger person or a coward. I might have been both.

In no rush, I finished my meal with his commentary without causing a scene. I wouldn’t allow him to chase me out into the street.

Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash

People are representatives of their countries and hometowns, whether or not they want to be.

Stromsburg is a beautiful place that had been otherwise, incredibly friendly towards me. Yet my initial memory will always be of that man glaring daggers into the back of my skull. Including the people who might have overheard but chose to ignore him. Unfortunate, isn’t it.

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kat.
Globetrotters

Storytelling about my travels and other experiences in between.