A first-year Sikh-origin law student at the Harvard Law School was shopping in a store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while talking to his mother on the phone, when a man walked in and said, "Oh look, there's an (expletive) Muslim."
He was allegedly abused by the man who mistook him for a Muslim. He shared this scary experience with The Boston Globe. "Over the weekend, I was confronted by a man who called me a '(expletive) Muslim' and followed me around a store aggressively asking where I was from, and no one in the store said a thing. I was on the phone with my mom the entire time, and we were both concerned for my safety as this man stood inches away from me," the student, who requested his identity be withheld, said.
"While this pales in comparison to discrimination faced by others, and while I’m not particularly rattled/disheartened, bystander intervention is crucial. Whenever we see racism, sexism, islamophobia, or xenophobia, we need to take a stand—all of us. I’m going to keep walking with my head held high and with love in my heart—no one will change that. But hopefully we can stand together against intolerance and injustice," the student wrote in a Facebook post.
Since it was published, the post by the first-year law student at the university has been shared more than 150 times.
According to reports, over 200 such incidents have been reported since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election.