Indian American family subjected to racist tirade on United flight

Award-winning Indian American wedding photographer Pervez Taufiq’s family faces harassment from a fellow United Airlines passenger

By Arun Kumar

Pervez Taufiq, an award-winning Indian American wedding photographer, traveling with his family was the target of a racist tirade from a fellow United Airlines passenger, which was captured on video.

Taufiq had just flown from Cancun to Los Angeles with his family last week when a woman spewed racist comments at family members, including his two young sons, on an airport shuttle bus.

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“Your family is from India. You have no respect, you have no rules, you think you can push everyone, push, push, push,” the woman told Taufiq and his family, according to a video the artist shared on Instagram on Nov 24. “That’s what you think you are. You guys are f****** crazy.”

The incident began before the bus ride on the flight itself, during which Taufiq’s 11-year-old son sat in the same row as the woman.

She was making comments to him on the flight, Taufiq told British online newspaper The Independent. “She was saying, ‘Are you Indian?’ He’s 11, so he was like, ‘Yeah, I’m Indian.’”

“And she’s like, ‘Are you from New Delhi?’ And he said, ‘No, my family’s from Bombay,’ and so that’s where this whole thing kicked off,” Taufiq added. “Then she said, ‘Oh, I gotta talk to your parents.’”

Taufiq described his 11-year-old son as respectful and quiet throughout the flight, noting the flight attendant even praised how well-behaved the boy was. He’s “so quiet and literally just playing on his iPad … he’s really well behaved, to be honest,” Taufiq said.

When Taufiq’s family ran into the woman again after they deplaned, and boarded the shuttle bus on the tarmac, Taufiq said the woman told his other son, who is four years old, to “shut up.”

“She turns to our youngest son, who was talking about the plane outside and says, ‘Shut up,’” Taufiq told the newspaper.

“I think I went into fight-or-flight a little bit, I said, ‘Don’t you ever f****** talk to my son that way,” Taufiq added. “‘You don’t have a right to do that,’” he added. “And that’s when her husband got up and literally got into my face, as if he’s going to hit me,” said Taufiq.

Taufiq shared the video on Instagram @ptaufiqphotography/Instagram writing, “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 didn’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. The remainder of this is what happened. I’m thankful United @united got her off the bus ultimately and a few fellow passengers stood up for us. Blown away these types of people still exist. As photographers we have seen a lot of, but this is one we could have done without.”

After the incident, United Airlines placed the disruptive passenger on its no-fly list.