I'm a flaming flaggot around here (I truly thought I just coined that expression, but [1]). I almost flagged this one, but a black friend of mine recently had Walking While Black story of his own, so I read it. Lo and behold, the story covered his scenario, waving to a cop, first thing. I hear about things like this all the time online; from rappers and comedians; occasional news story; once in a great while, a first-person story from a colored friend. I usually rationalize it away thinking: "That's really only a problem in backwoods towns, far, far from here. Here you get the obligatory asshole cop every now and then, of course, but it's not the norm." This story made me realize A) it doesn't have to be the norm, it just has to be enough to cause someone to ALWAYS be on alert, to be a life altering problem B) No matter how quick I get at dismissing the instinctual thought pattern "different person is scary", the fact remains, I have those thoughts and they likely affect my actions in a way noticeable to other humans. Neither of those realizations are a surprise to me, but this story convinced me I haven't thought critically enough about them. Getting this stubborn old mind to reconsider it's position is an epic hack.

[1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=flaggot