I've never really experienced racism or overt hate speech. I'm white, it never happens.
However today, An elderly white morbidly obese gentleman approaches me at the gym today at the University of Calgary. He starts chatting me up and because I'm a nice guy I carry on with the conversation.
It quickly skewed into Trumpesque racist rhetoric. At first I thought he was joking. But the way he was trying to recruit me into his racist belief system was really impressive. I mean someone can have an opinion but there's a fine line between opinion and hate speech. It quickly went to hate speech and I mean the kind that Adolf Hitler liked to use.
Before I knew it, all of Canada's troubles are to be blamed on Muslims, specifically Arabs, Jews and native Canadians. And what went from an uncomfortable opinion to hate speech was striking.
I suspect he wanted me to empathize with him because I happen to be white.
So, a little bit flustered I didn't know how to respond until I realized that he was being absolutely hateful in his rhetoric.
I responded 'your opinions are stained with overt generalizations and really disgusting racist attitudes' I followed 'you are in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong century for that kind of belief system.' It is not welcome at the University of Calgary.
He huffed and puffed and I said to him 'You and I are the only white people in this gym' you were probably in the wrong place to be making such commentary.
So I wasn't sure if this is something you should complain about without proof. So I went to the guest services at Active Living at the University of Calgary and relayed my experience. They were fantastic, they took this very seriously and are investigating.
Anyway, a bit of a startling experience. I've never experienced racism but that was pretty ugly.
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