Heather Chau on "Tony's Story"

I find it interesting how the author let's the reader know the cultural background of the characters in the first few sentences of the story. It's never directly stated. Except, the author says that Leon takes the narrator's hand and "held it tight like a white man". This let's us know from the beginning of the story that the characters are at least minority characters. Later, we're specifically let known that they're Indian.

What strikes me is that, then, the cop's racial identity is assumed to be white. We don't get any specific information about his race but because it's not classified as anything different than white, we assume he's white. While it's likely that most cops in the United States are white, I find it interesting to wonder how the story's meaning might change if the cop's racial identity was implied or let known to be something else, such as Asian or anything else.