Yes, a white person without any first-hand experience (or who hadn’t done a little work or read a small smattering of books) would almost certainly say that you were being silly.

I wouldn’t. Thirty-five years ago, I was in a deli in Middletown, CT, with my black girlfriend. We were in separate aisles when she looked around for me. The white female cashier accused her of looking around to see if she could steal something without being seen and told her to leave.

Now, I would have a way of understanding and dealing with this accusation. I’d file it under “black while looking around” and take out my cell phone and try to catch this racist in the act. As it was, nothing in my 25 years of whiteness had prepared me for this moment. I reacted in a spluttering rage, bouncing a 2-liter bottle of soda off the counter in the process.

This was not the best way to deal with the situation, even in the day, but it was an important early part of a long and painful education about how black people are treated in the USA.