Give me a smile.... you racist

The other day I was in a big-box style bookstore, in Texarkana on the way back from Arkansas. I walked over to a helpdesk and was waiting to ask an assistant if they had any books in Spanish, since I had found nothing and I didn't want to waste any more time. I had my arms folded and was facing about 2 o'clock from the helpdesk. A man asking questions of an assistant to my left turned round mid-conversation, looked me up and down extremely blatantly, reached over to me from about 5 feet away, stopped just short of touching me, and said "How YOU doin'?" in delightful Joey-from-Friends style. "Hey, d'you wanna give me a smile?"

"Not to a complete stranger, no" I replied. The assistant continued to try and help him.
He muttered something else at me. "Stop harassing me," I responded.
"I'm not harassing you, I just asked you to give me a smile."
"Leave me alone."
"mumble mumble harassment mumble mumble"
"Leave me alone."
"You're a racist."
"I don't like to be harassed by anyone."
"Racist."
"You shouldn't be bothering me at all, why can't you just leave me alone?"
"Racist."

"Hi, can I help you?"
"Yes, I was just wondering if you have books in Spanish? A section or anything, or any kids' books?"
"No, we don't, I'm sorry."
"OK, thanks, bye."

I went to find my husband to tell him we needed to leave because I had just been called a racist for asking someone to stop bothering and embarrassing me, and that for that reason I now felt threatened on top of all that. He asked what had been said, I repeated it word for word. He can't believe it. We walked past him, with him still glaring threateningly at us both. I wondered if my husband was about to get beaten up, as he was always gloomily predicting would happen before we came to this country if I ever "started mouthing off" at anyone.

Oh, how I wish I'd had the wit to respond to 'You're a racist' with 'And you're a sexist'. Because, of course, calling me a racist is easy to do and probably has some truth in it, because most people are somewhat racist when they've been brought up in a racist society*. But I hope you believe that his race** was not foremost in my mind when I asked him to stop bothering me.

*At least I'm working on it, though.
** (which I don't need to define for this post as it's not relevant - I guess you only need to know that it's different to mine