What's your "accidental racist" moment?

In college, I was in a group for a finals project in one of my classes. One of the other girls was of some kind of Asian heritage--she was always perfectly put together and chic and super smart and would talk about her 5 year plan at the age of 18--she was so intimidatingly intelligent--the exact person you want in your group. The rest of our group were a bunch of kinda lazy dudes that didn't want to do any work. She and I were working together on one segment of the project and it involved a lot of math, I told her that I'm sure she would be waaaay better at it than me. She clammed up and looked pissed. "Because I'm Asian, right?" I was like, "I have no idea what that has to do with anything." and she's like, "I'm Asian, so I have to be super good with numbers, right?" and I was like, "I don't know about that, but I have a math learning disability, so you have to be better than me at it." She instantly smiled and was like, "Oh. I thought you were being a racist bitch." I looked at her and said, "I have no clue how you being better at math than me is racist, what are you talking about?" And apparently Asian people are looked down on for being good at math? I'd never heard that before or since, so I guess I'll take her word for it.

/r/AskReddit Thread