When you travel mostly alone for the better part of a month, you find yourself doing interesting things.

Thinking turns into full conversations and stories, natural habits and tendencies rear their ugly head, and people watching becomes a narrative for your own personal entertainment.

After 10,000 miles of traveling, consisting of both coasts (yes, Californians, there is more than one coast line), a few dozen states, many bathroom breaks and fast food ventures, I discovered one part of America that I didn’t find so sun-kissed and hot.

I consider myself…white. Caucasian. A Twinkie–– white on the inside. I’m adopted and both my parents are white. The city I grew up in was white. The church I went to was white.

Yet, I didn’t realize that while nothing about me screams Asian (except maybe my skin color and my eyelids – or lack thereof), people across this country immediately stereotyped me into something I’m not.

I flew out of LAX – no problems there, Asians are very prevalent in Southern California – and into JFK in New York. Immediately, I hopped onto a bus in the projects of East Brooklyn, only to be glared and sneered at for the entire awkward hour to my bus stop.

It’s funny, one of the biggest civil rights issues began on a bus, and it seems to continue today. . .only in reverse fashion. Something tells me Rosa Parks wouldn’t like what I saw that day.

Hopping onto the subway immediately provided another wave of ignorance – this time from the people I associate with most. Somewhere between Broadway Junction and the Kingstop Throop Av stop, the subway turns from mostly African-Americans to white people.

I felt transparent – as if they don’t bother to recognize my kind in Brooklyn. But I did notice that there appeared to be a strict containment line on who could sit where. And now it felt like Rosa Parks all over again.

Fast forward to Cleveland, a.k.a without-LeBron-we-don’t-seem-to-have-hope-in-life-anymore, and into a Giant Eagles super market. There I am, with my dad (remember, he’s white) as he’s buying wine for my grandmother.

We’re at the self-checkout line, and to my surprise I start to get chastised by a 50-something year old woman to leave the line.

Apparently, there’s a law that states minors, unless they’re with family, cannot be around someone buying alcohol. But alas, that is my dad, we are family, and therefore I can stand here.

Nope. She wouldn’t buy it. We left the store, tail between our legs. I couldn’t process what just happened. Someone could not believe two people with two very different skin colors could be related. She wouldn’t even look at our IDs.

It gets worse. As we took a family tour of Cleveland, there is a definitive line between the black part of town and the white part of town.

One part of town gets the money to maintain its looks, and the other doesn’t. I’ll let you guess which side was nicer.

I went for a jog in the “nicer” part of town, only to discover that when anyone with colored skin goes running through the neighborhood, parents call in their kids and a cop appears out of nowhere.

Racism doesn’t exist? That’s what us white folks seem to believe.

It’s funny that we need things like diversity week at our public schools, yet we turn around and say we are all equal. We need laws about hate crimes, yet we explain that the law should not see color–– that every person is a person no matter what color he is.

We’re all about equality, yet we need laws and celebrations to make sure those who aren’t the majority are recognized.

No one took the time to look past my skin color–– just like at the Café when someone makes a comment every time I go to eat rice. . . as if it’s a given.
I don’t see a skinny white girl who’s not eating and assume she’s anorexic just because studies show that the dominant amount of anorexic girls are white – and you shouldn’t assume because I’m Asian I’m eating rice, or because my friend Randa is black she likes fried chicken and watermelon.

We’re people and we like food.

Funny concept.

Matthew Fier** is a weekly columnist for The Chimes. For more, can follow him on Twitter (@mattfier) or at matthewfier.blogspot.com