An Indian American photographer is speaking out about a video he captured of a woman verbally attacking his family with racist slurs on a United Airlines shuttle bus.
Fifty-year-old Pervez Taufiq was traveling with his wife and three children from Mexico to Los Angeles the week before Thanksgiving when the woman accosted him, saying his family was “not American” and calling them “tandoori” and “stinky.”
Taufiq is a well-known wedding photographer who has been published in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, among others.
Taufiq is a well-known wedding photographer who has been published in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, among others.
He told NBC News that the woman’s harassment began in the air, when she approached his 11-year-old son, who was sitting separately from the family, and questioned him about his race, asking if he was Indian and where he was from. NBC News could not independently confirm the encounter on the plane.
When the passengers deboarded and loaded onto a shuttle bus to the main airport, the woman’s harassment continued, he said. Taufiq said the woman, seemingly unprompted, began screaming at his children to “shut up” as they played and talked among themselves.
“Obviously, I lost it at that point. I said, ‘Don’t ever tell my kid to shut up,’” he said. “She started with the racial stuff right then, and at that point we were like, ‘Uh oh, something’s gonna happen.”
The verbal abuse against the kids turned into a racist rant directed at Taufiq, he said, who began filming in the middle of her tirade. She’s seen in the video putting up her middle fingers at the family and mocking their background.
“Obviously, I lost it at that point. I said, ‘Don’t ever tell my kid to shut up,’” he said. “She started with the racial stuff right then, and at that point we were like, ‘Uh oh, something’s gonna happen.”
The verbal abuse against the kids turned into a racist rant directed at Taufiq, he said, who began filming in the middle of her tirade. She’s seen in the video putting up her middle fingers at the family and mocking their background. (NBC)