From News Dispatches
A Harvard student who says he was harassed in a Cambridge store by a man calling him a “f***ing Muslim” has shared his story on social media to encourage bystanders to be engaged and take positive action against acts of intolerance.
Since it was published, the post by Harmann Singh, a first year law student at the Cambridge University, has been shared more than 150 times. He also wrote about his experience in The Boston Globe.
The 22-year-old Sikh Harvard Law School student from Buffalo, New York, said he was shopping in a store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while speaking on the phone with his mother. “Over the weekend, I was confronted by a man who called me a ‘f—-ing Muslim’ and followed me around a store aggressively asking where I was from, and no one in the store said a thing,” Singh wrote on his Facebook page. “While this pales in comparison to discrimination faced by others, and while I’m not particularly rattled/disheartened, bystander intervention is crucial,” his post said. “ 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.”
Writing about his experiences in the Boston Globe, Singh said that since the election last week, many Americans have felt unsafe and incidents of hate have increased dramatically. “However, people of color, immigrants, religious minorities, and other groups have in ways felt marginalized for hundreds of years,” he wrote. Instances of harassment are not new, and their increased frequency makes understanding and responding crucial and timely. Whether this happened last year or on the night of the election, whether the man was white or brown, whether I was actually a Muslim or not – these are irrelevant. Such hate is intolerable whenever, wherever, and against whomever it occurs.”
