Before I say anything else, I'm in violent agreement with everything you're saying (as the White husband in an interracial marriage). I'm only relating this story because it's an extreme exception that proves the rule.

When ever I go in to see the doctor for anything serious (e.g. I was diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma last year), I bring my wife with me.

Before the consultation begins, I always tell them it's okay to get a little deep into the details with us--my wife is a nurse practitioner by training and is a clinical director in the VNS hospice program, responsible for nearly a thousand hospice patients in Manhattan and the Bronx. She's the real deal.

As soon as that fact comes out, I disappear. The nurses and doctors speak directly and professionally to my wife, in details that I can't always follow (I pick up on the important stuff and get the breakdown later). I'm the subject of conversation, not the intended audience.

I had to go through this experience a few times and in a few different contexts to realize why it was so strange and even disorienting. It completely upends the racist assumptions under which I've always operated. It's one thing to know about these implicit biases--it's totally another thing to get brought up short by a sudden awareness of my own blindness.