Famous Indian American photographer Pervez Taufiq is speaking out about a distressing event that he recorded on camera, where a woman on a United Airlines shuttle bus used a racist slur to verbally harass his family.
Just before Thanksgiving, Taufiq, 50, was flying from Mexico to Los Angeles with his wife and three kids when the woman attacked them, calling them “un-American” and using derogatory names like “tandoori” and “stinky” against them.
Taufiq, a well-known wedding photographer whose work has appeared in high-end magazines, posted the footage on his Instagram page to draw attention to the incident.
The argument apparently started between the woman and Taufiq’s son aboard the aeroplane bus. On the shuttle bus, things got out of hand.
Watch the video here:
Video footage shows the woman saying to Taufiq, “Your family is from India; you have no respect, you have no rules, you think you can push everyone, push, push, push. That’s what you think you are. You guys are f****** crazy.” She also threatened to record his “f-king tandoori a**” after Taufiq referenced earlier comments she made about curry.
“Mortified, we just went through this. This lady was harassing our son on the flight, unbeknownst to us, asking him if he was Indian and making comments. When we landed in LA and got on the transfer bus, she told our son to “shut up.” I told her she doesn’t have a right to speak to my son that way, and her husband got in my face trying to tell me to not speak to his wife,” Taufiq wrote in the caption.