Social akwardness mistaken for racism

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that reminds me of a scene in monk... when monk is at some store, a black person approaches him and shakes his hand - and monk begs his assistant to give him a disinfectant handkerchief.

ah Sorry for misunderstanding.
Sounds to me like an even crazier guy then; unless it's common to walk up to strangers and offer them help looking for products - then his reaction kinda confirms it.
Pretty crazy. . . Good to hear that he didn't turn out to be dangerous!

Yeah...the guy did seem pretty crazy, actually.

I'm white, and living in a city (Baltimore, MD) that is a haven of poverty and racial tensions. The issue comes up fairly often because my social inattentiveness leaves me frequently misconstrued as being an arrogant racist; sometimes to the point of a couple of life-threatening scenarios that I have experienced.

You could have diplomatically deflected what he said, if he was trying to pick you up. Unfortunately, such tact is unavailable to Aspies sometimes, so your reaction might have offended him for that reason. He probably did not accept your obvious rejection of him, which you provided inadequate explanation for and in an untactful way, so he chose his own conclusion, perhaps warranted by his own past experiences, that you were racist.

Accusations of racism are not something that can be taken lightly if they are unfounded in truth. They can be deeply hurtful, although perhaps not as much as true racism itself. I experienced a couple of incidents where I was accused of racism while working a cashier at a store that were somewhat harrowing for me. I hope that it never happens again to me, so I understand some of what you are feeling.

People can do the opposite too.

A number of times people have gotten the totally wrong idea and thought I had crushes on them, because of smiling too much which I tend to do, and especially in the past I've gotten stuck for words and said nothing inappropriatly or over-talked or laughed - classic 'crush' behavior as seen in countless cartoons - totally not how I'm feeling. Its funny but not, when you have to deal with the results.

I just don't think I've ever been able to pull off 'casual' too well.

That is an unfortunate situation. I doubt it will help, but know that it was not your fault. Ironically, he is engaging in prejudice while accusing you of it.

He sounds like a jerk to me. My guess is he was trying to flirt with you and got pissed off when you didn't respond.
I think you acted entirely appropriately.

Consider how most whites respond when they are accused of being racist. It generally throws them off balance making them desperate to convince their accusers that they are not racist. I had a Black guy I was working with who could not refute a point I made in an argument. His response? He said "you're a racist". My response was to say back "No I"m not! And to prove it I'll agree with everything you say!". At that point he had a shocked look on his face and I quickly followed up with "Yeah, that's what you wanted me to do isn't it?". Well that individual learned not to do that with me anymore. I just want to point out that there are people in this world who, if you hand them a club, they will hit somebody with it. Post has been edited.

That kind of thing has happened to me, but I've never worried about it. I just think, "Woah, that guy was crazy!" and laugh to myself and go about my business. I mean, some people are just plain crazy. Convenience stores are good places to meet crazy people, as are buses.