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USA Today: On March 18...Karina Brown...a mother and college administrator...and her childhood friend went to see Bon Jovi at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus (Ohio). They were celebrating her 45th birthday. Toward the end of the show, another concertgoer turned to her and said, "You don't belong in this country."
...Brown, the daughter of a Japanese immigrant and U.S. military veteran, was shaken and disturbed by the woman's comment...(and)...left immediately...But in the days that followed, she realized something even more alarming.
Several of the people she told about the incident tried to justify it, or told her she was exaggerating its impact. Then, after documenting the night on Facebook, she received many negative comments. Brown decided to report her story to Documenting Hate, an online database that aims to track and spread awareness of discrimination across the country...(C)reated by nonprofit newsroom ProPublica...the project...is an effort to document hate crimes and discrimination and spread awareness about how often it happens...
Although Brown isn't a stranger to discrimination, she attributes the incident to a shift in culture sparked by Donald Trump. Since his election as president, people feel more emboldened to express racism, she said....
Brown said she reported her story because she wants people to know that hate can happen in the "most unsuspecting of places...Here’s this woman standing next to me...She looks like someone I would see at one of my kids’ PTA meetings, and the look she gave me, the contempt she had for me. It floored me, I just couldn’t believe it," Brown said...
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The real problem is, that woman didn't belong at a Bon Jovi concert: does she feel the same way about the Cuban or the Jew or the black percussionist she'd been watching all night? That's what I would have asked her instead of leaving -- especially in view of how much Bon Jovi tickets cost!