In my experience, these guys are less likely spout off if a white man is with the woman and/or kids. I have experienced these kinds of guys saying crap to me BECAUSE I was in the company of my very Middle Eastern-looking husband. Someone even said something incredibly lewd to me about being with a Middle Eastern man once when my husband and I were leaving a Walmart.

Recall that most Middle Eastern men are on the shortish and smallish side. My Persian husband is easily a head taller than the average Middle Eastern man. And, he was a former classical wrestler, still very much in form at that time. He was 6'3" and around 280 LBS at the time.

Dude was about average height for an American. He was scrawny and thin, except for the protruding beer gut hanging over his baggy sweat pants cutoffs, from under his sloppy t-shirt. You know the kind of pants/shorts – they're big enough to go around the gut, so they're floppy around the legs and crotch (where little to no bulge is evident). Seriously, why do these guys go out in public like that?

Anyway, scrawny dude's bigotry got the better of him and he didn't even notice that my husband wasn't the smallish target he was likely used to bullying. When my husband turned back, looming over him, and challenged dude to repeat to him what dude had said, dude scuttle into the store backward, with his hands raised to fend off my husband's ire.

I dragged on my husband's arm toward the parking lot to keep him from following dude into the store. He checked his anger and we left. I've often wondered if dude soiled himself – he certainly looked like he might as he beat that hasty, backwards retreat.