I was standing in line at a suburban supermarket, thankful that there were only two people ahead of me, and expecting no more than the usual checkout routine. The cashier and the shopper had a friendly discussion about the amount of money on the debit card. Both women seemed to be in the same age-bracket, in their early thirties, the customer was African American the cashier was white.

I began to put my items on the counter when the next in line, a white older man said to the cashier, “Those people, they don’t like to work. Why should they? Obama gives them food stamps.”

The man’s disparaging remark about the president was made in a wider political context in which Republicans had engaged in undermining the president since 2008. In 2012 when he was a presidential candidate Newt Gingrich referred to President Obama as “the food stamp president,” a statement infused with racial implications. Gingrich inserted the president in a familiar Republican narrative that links food stamps and people of color.

Historically, however, the first family to receive food stamps in America was a white family. The Muncy family of Paynesville, West Virginia was eligible for food stamps because Alderson Muncy lost his mining job. The family became the face of poverty and hunger that John F. Kennedy, as a presidential candidate, saw first hand in West Virginia in 1960. On February 2, 1961 President Kennedy’s first Executive Order called for expanded food distribution and on May 29, 1961 the Muncy family was given $95 in food stamps to feed Cloe, Alderson and their 13 children.

I don’t know whether the man at the supermarket cared much about the history of food stamps. He clearly felt free to make a disparaging comment about the woman who had used what is known as Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT), an electronic debit system that food stamps recipients now use instead of the paper ones that the Muncy family used in 1961.

When I heard the man’s remark, my first thought was that mercifully the woman with the EBT card had left the store and was spared the insult, though my guess was that she had encountered similar racist insults before. I was getting ready to ask the man if he knew anything about the woman that would have prompted his indictment that she refused to work.

Before I could say a word, the cashier spoke in the same polite voice she had used earlier, “I work two jobs and I get food stamps. I could not feed my children without it.” The man did not respond. He paid, picked up his bags and left. He must have been surprised by the white woman’s identification with a woman of color, which erased any racialized implications of food stamps.

The supermarket cashier, a mother who works two jobs, belongs to a large group of 47 million Americans who receive food stamps. According the Huffington Post 40.2 percent of food stamps recipients are white, 25.7 percent are black, 10.3 percent are Hispanic, 2.1 percent are Asian and 1.2 percent are Native American. The common denominator of 47 million people of different ethnic identities is that they experience food insecurity in the richest country in the world.

When the cashier began to ring my food items I told her how much I admired her courage to speak up in a way that would not insult a customer and added, “not too many people would have the courage to do what you just did.” Without looking up from the task at hand and in an assured voice she said, “I just spoke the truth.”

I had an ethnographic moment, I wanted to interview the cashier and have a conversation with her that would include the African American woman. While that was not possible, it was a good moment. It gave me hope that Donald Trump’s shocking and disgraceful immigration proposal would ultimately capture only a small segment of white folk. Yet, hope is not enough, hope calls for political engagement. The good moment at the supermarket is a reminder that we must not be bystanders, that we must counter Trump-like politics and join the brave cashier in speaking the truth about poverty and racism in our country.