New York: An Indian-American family subjected to racial harassment last month plans to press charges against the woman who hurled abuses at them, emphasizing the need for accountability and speaking out against hate.
The incident took place in November when renowned photographer Pervez Taufiq, 50, was traveling with his wife and three kids from Mexico to Los Angeles in a bus. A fellow female passenger went on a racist diatribe against the family while it was onboard the United Airlines shuttle bus.
Taufiq posted a video online of his family's ordeal that shows the woman racially abusing them, using expletives and making derogatory gestures at them. “Your family is from India, you have no respect. You have no rules,” the woman says.
At one point when Taufiq says he is an American, the woman hurls back, using an expletive, “You are not American...You are from...India.” “Our thought process is we need to take her and hold her accountable in the court of law. United, unfortunately, was not able to help us with anything,” Taufiq told PTI in an interview on Sunday.
He said there has been no sense of accountability or introspection forthcoming from the woman.
“We're going to press charges...We're heavily considering pushing it forward. We have legal people who have consulted with us and told us as much that it would be the smart move and to not let this just die into the night.
"Our generation is very different from my parents' generation. I think in my parents' time, they would have put their head down, kept quiet, that type of thing. I think those times are over. And I think that it's up to our generation to really make sure that this is not the type of thing that you can do without consequence," Taufiq said.
He said initially he didn't have the name of the woman and that made it difficult to go ahead with any legal action against her.
“Now her own family and her friends have come forward to us, reached out to us and said, ‘We want to apologize to you'... ‘we need to share her name with you, and we need to tell you what's going on'. That was enormous, obviously for us,” Taufiq said.
He further learnt that “this is a habit in her hometown and that people have known her to do this type of thing, and she has this type of behavior, even her friends and family, half of them, don't speak to her anymore because of this”.
The woman has been identified as Arlene Consuela, Taufiq said, adding that “this is the irony of it all” given that her name is of Mexican descent. “So one immigrant is basically telling another immigrant that they are not American.” The fact that no one on the entire bus came out in support of the family as they were being targeted with racial slurs “was jarring to us,” he said. “It was pretty brutal to have nobody. And the silences, as they say, was incredibly deafening.”
The photographer said anyone who goes through or is going through an incident like this, should know that there's support out there, that the right people will support them, and “that so many of us would stand by their side. And for people who are racist, I think they should learn a lesson from this as well, that maybe they're on the wrong side of this.” As the video of the incident went viral, Taufiq said he is grateful for the outpouring of support that he and his family have received on and off social media. (PTI)
