The other day I was fixing my bike outside my apartment and some dude walked by and said, in horrible Mandarin, ‘Are you Chinese?’ The only reason why I knew what he asked was because I took three semesters of Mandarin in undergrad (and the only reason I took three semesters of Mandarin in undergrad was because my school had a foreign language requirement and they didn’t offer Korean). To that I replied, ‘Uh, no, I’m not Chinese…’ And he said, ‘Where are you from?’ and I said I was Korean-American. Okay. Then he said, ‘Well, welcome to this country!’

Seriously?

I was like, dude, please tell me you’re joking. So I said, ‘Thanks… I’ve been here for 24 years’

— Rachel in The Thing About Stereotypes Is That They’re True, But The Thing About Stereotypes Is That They’re Not True