Video shows United Airlines passenger on alleged racist rant against Massachusetts family
BOSTON - A family from Massachusetts says they were the victims of a racist tirade by a stranger on a United Airlines bus last week. Pervez Taufiq recorded the incident on his cell phone as he says a woman started yelling at his four-year-old son.
United Airlines incident
"She's yelling at him, the four-year-old, and says 'shut up, just shut up,'" Taufiq said. "And I snapped, and I said, 'don't you ever speak to my son that way. You have no right.'"
Taufiq and his wife Nicole are both wedding photographers who travel the globe. He says they were flying to California on a United Airlines flight with their three kids when they first noticed the woman's bizarre behavior. She was seated next to his 11-year-old son in business class.
"She asked if I was Indian, and I said yes, I was Indian," Taufiq says his son told him.
After landing, passengers on the flight were driven to the airport on a United bus. That is where Taufiq says the woman started using racial epithets about his family. The video posted to Taufiq's social media shows the two going back and forth.
"You're from India. You have no respect," she is heard saying in the cell phone video. "I'm American," she says.
"So are we," Taufiq responds in the video.
"No, you're not American," she says back to him.
The video also shows the woman referring to Taufiq and his family as "Tandoori."
"That's brutal to have someone tell you that because you don't look like them, you're not American," Taufiq told WBZ-TV.
Taufiq says United Airlines staff asked his family if they would like to leave the bus, and he replied that he wanted the woman removed. The video shows the woman walking off of the bus to talk to staff members, and Taufiq says she did not return.
Throughout the incident, Taufiq said that one man spoke up for his family. He hopes this ordeal will help others speak up if this happens to anyone else.
"This is not acceptable and if you see it, stand up, say something, be with the person that's going through this," he said.
Explaining racism to children
Nicole Taufiq says their 11-year-old son is processing what happened. The couple and their children have traveled to 34 countries for their work. They say they have never had to explain racism to their kids before.
"He's dealing with it in different ways. Like, everyday is a new question, a new angle. I think he's still trying to process this whole experience in his own way, and I think that's just hard to watch," Nicole said.
The couple hopes to identify the woman in the video and press charges.
"I certainly would love it if someone found her, and we could press charges against her and then realistically for her to get the very loud message that she's one of very few and there are a lot more people like us," Taufiq said.
WBZ reached out to United Airlines for a comment and was told the company did not have any additional information to share.
