I donʻt want to paint with too broad of a brush, but “otherism” (racism, antisemitism, religious and ethnic biases of whatever stripe ) clearly affects roughly half the nation. Despite the fact that hate crimes increased 34.99 % during the Trump presidency, and that his dog whistles became increasingly overt over the course of four years, more people voted for him in 2020 than in 2016 … and that should scare the hell out of us.

Demographics suggest that diversity will one day be the norm in America, and hate mongers will no longer be tolerated in the public square—but that is a couple of decades down the road and we are going to have some very painful and difficult years before we get there.

Thanks for sharing your story. If you have time, my article titled “Bigot at the Bus Stop,” tells of a somewhat similar incident (in the sense that both situations show us that bias is becoming increasingly acceptable in public settings).