Because I’m Asian and I can remember like at least 10 instances where people in the US (Including Both White and Black people) would assume I don’t speak English before I had a chance to talk. I’ve lived in this country since 8, I speak on a native level. I wonder if there is just a subconcious “perpetual foreigner” stereotype engrained into people.
Because I sometimes feel uncomfortable. Like it just feels very awkward after I get asked that, then I speak English perfectly lol.
Depends what you mean by “looks foreign.” If you mean their skin is a different color than mine, then no. Half my neighbors and coworkers are different ethnicities than me.
If you’re Asian and you walked into my old office building and then stood in the elevator looking helpless, then I assumed that you were there looking for the embassy in that building and when I hit floor 8 for myself I also smiled at you and hit floor 4 for you to get where I assume you were going. (Seeing faces light up every time and thankful nods as they walked into the embassy just confirmed it.)
So: no, not just if you’re another race. Yes, if you go somewhere I expect people from out of the country to go and then demonstrate a lack of English.
In your particular case OP I’m betting you live in a small town in the south, where every random white person barely ever even meets someone who was born more than 100 miles away. Shit I’ve met people who have never left the county they were born in. (Not a typo, I meant county not country)
I live in a deep blue city 💀
Then I kind of assume, like the folks in the elevator, you were doing some behavior which, unbeknown to you, signaled that you felt lost or out of place.
If you disagree, feel free to share a story that you remember in specific detail. And of course, even “blue cities” have racist assholes, could have just been some bigoted piece of shit.
But you haven’t told us what you mean by “looks foreign”. What does that mean?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_foreigner
That doesn’t answer my question. If I’m looking at a human being that “looks foreign”, what am i seeing about them with my eyeballs? What are the physical characteristics of their appearance that visually can be seen?