Not my friend's experiences. Mine. I spent a New Year's Eve at a Korean nightclub where he and I were the only white folx there. No one would talk to me. I was super butthurt. Found out later that a rumor had gone around that I was Axl Rose and they were all giving me space because they thought I was hiding from the paparazzi.

Don't get me wrong - Asians complain about this all the time, while also grilling each other every third sentence about their nationality. Then they also argue about how fobby everyone is. And, just like African Americans get to call each other the n-word freely but white people's careers can be ruined by the rumor of it, nobody who isn't Asian gets to say shit about it.

And that's my beef - if you're a minority, you get to talk about it all day. If you're white, you're an oppressor for noticing. A culture has been created where I can get in trouble for bringing it up as a point of conversation but if those people I might oppress feel comfortable around me, they'll talk about it all day long.

It's a super-tricky path to walk - you have to know when you're in enough to even acknowledge that you hear the discussion because if you broach it too early, you'll spend the remainder of your relationship in the awkward white guy zone. Refuse to acknowledge it until too late and you become perpetually labeled as uncomfortable around Asians. Articles like this? They make it harder, not easier. The "baggage" discussed is carried by everybody, not just immigrants and people of color, and pretending it's a one-sided issue only makes it heavier.