“So where are you from?” asks the girl, in a cloying, faux-interested voice.

I am prepared for this conversation. It inexorably reoccurs anytime I am around an especially audacious white stranger. “California,” I mutter, knowing that isn’t the answer she is looking for.

“No, where are you really from?”

And there it is. The question I receive at least once a month. The girl is so unabashed and exasperated about it, as if I’ve been the rude one. She taps her foot, crosses her arms, expectant. I consider my most scathing reply, one filled with vulgarities and rage. I breathe. “I was born here. But my parents came from India,” comes my restrained response. Her expectant puckered mouth turns to a self-satisfied smirk, again, one with which I am familiar. She is a detective, gleaning nuggets of information to pepper stories with. “And he was Indian! Just like I thought he would be! I had him pinned the moment I saw him.” In writing, it seems ludicrous, but similar conversations can be heard (or in my case, overheard) in airports, at parties, and in coffee shops.

This familiar, nauseating exchange is part of an overture to life: race. Black Panther protester Assata Shakur, in a 1998 issue of Honey magazine, said:

"In some ways it was easier for my generation. Racism was blatant and obvious. The “Whites Only” signs let us know clearly, what we were up against. Not much has changed, but the system of lies and trickology is much more sophisticated. Today young people have to be highly informed and acutely analytical, or they will be swept up into a whirlpool of lies and deception."

It’s so easy to dismiss our society as post-racial, as if the issue of race disappeared with the election of President Barack Obama. This is one of many milestones on the long march toward racial equality, but as Shakur noted, racism has become covert. The racisms I, and other persons of color, encounter in the present day are micro-racisms, like the exchange with the “curious” girl, or the assumptions people make on a daily basis. “Oh you’re Indian? Do you understand English? Do you want me to speak more slowly?” This is accompanied by deliberate, but meaningless gesticulations.

Why does it bother me so much? After all, the prying questions and the self-satisfying attitudes don’t hurt me. They merely serve to satisfy people’s curiosities. But in reality, these acts are damaging because they differentiate between “us” and “them” much like their predecessor, the differentiation between the “whites” and the “coloreds.” As Shakur implies, this mentality acts as vestiges of segregation, though through attitudes rather than laws and verbal aggressions rather than printed signs. These are the intimations of inequality and of some fundamental difference in the worth of each class of persons.

Another problem exists in the promises inherent in micro-racisms. Being exposed to small acts and putting up with it sends a message: that we are willing to put up with racism, as long it’s not that racist. This leads to greater audacity on the parts of aggressors. Greater degrees of discrimination and segregation follow, as evidenced by Stop and Frisk in New York City and “random” pat downs conducted in airports, respectively.

Stop and Frisk is a program in New York City that allows people to be stopped and frisked for drugs, weapons, etc. based on “reasonable” suspicion. The typical standard for searches is probable cause, but by lowering it even further, the program opens up to blatant corruption. In a report released by the New York Civil Liberties Union, it was reported that 88% of New Yorkers who were stopped were completely innocent. Furthermore, only 11% of those stopped were white, in comparison to the 44% of individuals in the city who are white. The vast majority of people stopped and frisked by the NYC police department are African-American (56%) or Hispanic (30%). This makes the implication NYCPD that African-American and Hispanic individuals are considered inherently more likely to commit crimes, or worse, that people of color are inherently suspicious. A program that so directly targets persons of color is evidence of a growing system of discrimination and second-class citizenry.

Much like its cousin, Stop and Frisk, “random” pat downs by the Transportation Security Agency overwhelmingly target people of color, more specifically, people who appear to be of Middle Eastern or even Asian descent. This program, much like Stop and Frisk, is implicitly based on reasonable suspicion. The pat downs are random in name only. Based on the misinformed belief that Asians are terrorists and the principle of “better safe than sorry,” TSA agents pat down men and women who are upstanding citizens of America, and as far from being a terrorist as the white people surrounding them. It hides under the guise of maintaining the public order and keeping the nation safe, but this cannot be the most effective way. It neglects a massive piece of the US population while being overly stringent with a small fragment. As with Stop and Frisk, it is not only the result of a widening racial gap, but it creates a race barrier that only furthers the division.

Do not expect blatant segregation to become commonplace. Instead, expect that micro-racisms will become further institutionalized, more accepted under the veneer of innocent curiosity and keeping social order. These are the tools used by modern racism, and persons of color need to come to arms against such a system, if there is any hope of dismantling racism and finding true equality.

There is much criticism on another side of the debate. Some think the entire idea of a widening racial barrier is hogwash, contrived by people who see issues and injustice anywhere they look. But it is a reality, visible to persons of color, if not society at large. As Hari Kondabolu noted, “Saying people of color are obsessed with race is like saying that someone is obsessed with swimming when they’re drowning.” The discrimination resulting from micro-racism is real, and a threat to those very ideals of freedom and equality Americans hold so dear. Combatting racism begins with ending micro aggressions and seeing that everyone is informed about the implications of their actions, no matter how minor. Standing up for ourselves, when we face small jabs at ethnicity, race, and faith go a long way to creating citizens of one class, free to mingle and mix, and free of any barrier as they pursue that elusive goal: happiness.