Dear Society, Stop Trusting Me Just Because I'm White

Today I locked myself out my car.

I was wearing a leather jacket, had scruffy hair.... I looked like this... this is me.

I'm just... gonna... stay... calm... and...think... rationally...

I didn't have the money for a locksmith and the spare keys I had cut were sitting in the glovebox; tittering with inanimate schadenfreude.

Aquí! Aquí!

Well, I was in a crowded supermarket carpark, I mean really crowded. Afterschool rush, mothers, children, old ladies, people coming home from work...

I couldn't smash the window, it'd make a hell of a mess and my car's too old too just be able to order a new one. I didn't have any tools, so I couldn't pick or force the door lock.

Then I remembered I was a man. Steel bend, me can bend steel, steel no stop man! Luckily I own an early 90's Japanese car; which seems to be made of tinfoil and origami paper. すごい!

I forced my fingers between the top of the door frame and the car body, and began peeling the door back like a sardine can.

While I was doing this, about 8 people just looked at me knowingly, an old lady giggled, and a young woman offered to stick her hand in and undo the lock. Not a single person asked me if it was my car, or even wondered if I might be stealing it.

I finally got into my car, thank god. More than slightly proud of myself.

This isn't the first time I've had to break into a car or a house; in broad daylight, while people watched and simply assumed I was locked out.

I don't look rich, and I wouldn't say I look innocent either. Given a situation where there's a reasonable explanation, but also a possibility I did something wrong, people assumed the best case scenario. I think on a larger scale this accounts for a huge amount of inequity, not to mention corruption, crime, fraud (how many white accounts get away with stealing millions of dollars for years??)

I feel like if I was black, I don't think bending a car door in half would make senior citizens giggle. I'd probably get the other side of that coin.

Another time, I was hanging out with with my ex-wife and we were drinking rum and coke, she way overdid things; got blackout drunk, fell over and started squawking on the floor. I called an ambulance; but a police car turned up. Someone had heard all the noise and thought someone was being attack/raped.

The went outside and met the cops, and explained what happened. They came in, picked her up and took her to the hospital. That was it. No questioning, no records, nothing. Did I mention my ex wife is black, and the cops were white?

She went to the hospital, got tested for drugs, obviously she was clean and when she sobered up she admitted that she had just drunk way too fast.

But what if they had found she'd been drugged or raped? The cops didn't even ask my name...

So to me, that's the most profound and disturbing part of being a white male, given any situation; I automatically seem to be given the benefit of the doubt.

What's your experience?