2. The emotional slap in the face that is realizing some people just see you as a color.
When we got off the tram on our first day in Istanbul, someone called out, “Hey, Michelle Obama!” It’s not that being compared to the first lady is a bad thing—we should all be so lucky. But growing up I often had to deal with the annoying stereotype that all black people look the same, so it wasn’t 100 percent easy to laugh off.