I have experienced the same with increasing intensity in recent years. My husband is an Iranian-American Persian immigrant and our half-Persian son is, perforce of Iranian law, also Iranian-American. Iran law does not permit citizens to stop being Iranian citizens; if you're an Iranian who takes citizenship in another country, you automatically become a dual citizen. And, Iranian law imposes citizenship upon the children of Iranians born abroad, even when those Iranians have become citizens in other countries.

Anyway… in 2001, some rando, selling artwork for business decor, walked into our café in Missouri, went up to my husband behind the counter and told him, "I won't do business with you people because of what you did to the Towers."

It got increasingly worse from there. The escalation reached a fever pitch in 2016 when my son was threatened by his middle school classmates, "Trump is gonna send you and your dad to the gas chambers." Two of those same bullies later physically assaulted him, leaving him with a serious concussion from which it took more than six month to recover.

Those kinds of threats haven't come his way in the last two or three years. But, he has encountered parents of friends and girlfriends who thought he wasn't white enough to associate with their kids.