I hope this is not too stupid of a question, if it is I already apologize in advance.
Basically my girlfriend and I who are from Germany are planning to travel to the USA. We were hearing stuff that some Americans socially divide people by their ethnicity. I just wanted to ask online whether this is true and if there could be any concerns because my skin is very bright and my girlfriends skin is very dark.
Normally we never really cared or talked about this since at least in our community (where we are from) no one makes a thing out of it and we both just identify as German. But I heard that in some procedures in America you have to say what your ethnicity is? We even heard things like that in some places they divide people by “skin color” and base different cultures on that (we noticed that people from America even speak and behave differently based on whether they identify as “black” or “white”) and even have schools for primarily people with dark skin or so. And this concept is very new to us since our skin was never any topic for us and we are somewhat insecure that someone could say something since we look so different and are a couple and we don’t know if this could be “weird” for some Americans?
I assume that’s probably not the case and I’m somewhat misinformed, which is why we just want to make sure there isn’t anything that we have to know or potentially have to be concerned about.
I’ve definitely gotten lots of looks in the US due to my accent not matching the way I look as Americans understand it.
It ranges from “huh, that was weird” to actually annoying after a while, but it was never an outright issue for me.
Also, holy crap, stay away from cops. That is an actual piece of advice for the OP. You’re gonna think cops are there for you because you’re all European and stuff and I’m telling you now, US cops serve an entirely different social function and do not expect to interact with you unless it’s through violence. I am very serious about this.
Oh shit yeah, I assumed that was a given because I forgot other countries have cops that actually help people sometimes. ESPECIALLY stay away from any cop with visible tats because there’s a non zero chance they’re in a literal gang.