This afternoon I had an encounter that made me really, really angry.
A "gentleman" or "customer" had me just enraged this afternoon. Note the use of quotation marks, as neither term really applies to this individual- he was not a gentleman, as his behaviour will indicate, and he was not a customer, as he very obviously had no intention of purchasing anything.
The guy was sitting in Starbucks with several of our books- physics books, to be precise, copying the text from them verbatim.
Now, that's not okay. Not only is unpurchased merchandise not permitted in the Starbucks, it's a violation of copyright law to copy from the books. Even if it were not, we can�t just allow that when we're trying to sell these items. I asked him (and all the others in there who had our materials) to take his things to one of the chairs provided elsewhere, and politely informed him that he was not permitted to copy the materials.
Roughly an hour or so later, I come across the same guy using our bookshelf as a coaster for his coffee (he had gone as far as to shift the books on the shelf to make room for it), reclining in business, spreading all the way from Personal Investing to Real Estate. I then asked him to take one of the chairs by the windows instead, as we need to be able to access our books. There are not many things that deter shoppers to a section faster than some guy sprawled out in it as if it's a college dorm room.
The guy started spouting off about how I'd been behind his back and harassing him and watching his every move for the last hour- as if I don't have better things to do! Then he said I was a racist and that it was because his skin was darker than mine.
Now, I couldn't possibly care less what colour the dude is. I just can't allow him to essentially steal from us by copying our books, or allow him to inhibit other people from shopping. For all I could care, the guy could be bright green with antennae... and I really hadn't noticed he was another race. I�m still not sure he was. When he started spouting off, I just thought he looked tanned. Asking him to allow us to reach out books has everything to do with wanting other people to get what they want, and nothing to do with how he looks or where he�s from. It's irrelevant. I do care, however, how people behave. That's a far better benchmark of how to base your opinion of a person.
The call of racism in order to get attention or to get what you want, is wholly and completely morally reprehensible. Racism is horrible and a very serious issue, and calling it when it's not really happening belittles the millions who struggle against it for real every day. It's sickening, loathsome and unspeakably wrong to use the persecution of a people for personal gain. Making false accusations of any sort of discrimination just makes it more difficult for those who really and truly are battling hate crimes to find justice and make lasting change for the better. It unnecessarily perpetuates a culture of mistrust, and fosters needless resentment. This is the same rage I feel towards women who falsely accuse of rape because they're angry at their boyfriend (or ex). Sexual assault is a very serious issue, and every false report of it, every charge laid against an innocent man, lessens the chances of those who really experienced an assault to be taken seriously. I feel just as much anger towards one who falsely accuses another as I feel towards someone who actually commits such a crime.
I fear that if enough unscrupulous people use the word racism when it isn�t really true, over time it will cease to be believed when it really matters. I worry that we don�t do enough to foster understanding of each other as human beings, and every time someone falsely accuses another person of any kind of hate crime or discrimination, we add another brick to the walls between peoples that so many have fought so hard for so long to tear down.
This is more than the boy who cried wolf- in the end, he was the one who paid for his actions. This is one individual crying wolf for an entire ethnicity, for an entire people, who may indeed need help when the wolves are really at the door, only to find that the rest of the village has heard this story so many times before, and grown tired of the false alarms.
I believe in humanity- we are flawed and have made grievous errors towards each other; indeed, near-entire nations have wronged others, but in every case there have been those who worked to make things right. As we have evolved and learned about each other, the balance has tipped so that more people believe in the equality of humanity than not. All any of us can do as individuals is remember that we are all human. We are all people, and each one of us has a responsibility to behave correctly and ethically. Whether we come from a position that has historically had an unfair power over another, or if we are of a people who are emerging from and overcoming decades of persecution, we can only control our own individual actions. We have to all remember that as part of the human race, we have a responsibility to the entire human race to treat each person as a person and to never take any kind of advantage over others.

In other words, I should remind myself that he was one asshole on a whole planet who mostly try to be decent to each other.