Emily Raboteau was 23 the first time she was racially profiled, but it was a strange sort of profiling. Headed to Jerusalem to visit her childhood best friend, she presented a pigeonholing quandary for the security staff of the airline El Al, who wanted to make sure she didn’t pose a threat to the state of Israel but couldn’t figure out where her people came from.

“The United States” was not the answer they were looking for. “Before that,” they DEMANDED. “Your ancestors.” She resented their inquiries into her ethnicity, they objected to her recalcitrance, and she ended up being strip-searched.