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.
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.
“Your family is from India, you have no respect, you have no rules,” she said in the video. She then reached for her phone and said she was going to record while calling him “tandoori” in a derogatory way.
Taufiq, who was born in the U.S., asserted to her that he is American. “You’re not American,” she said. “You’re from f—– India.”
He posted the video to Instagram last week and thousands of his followers rallied to support him. South Asian influencers came to his defense in the comments, and even bigger names like journalist Katie Couric commented on the post or circulated the clip on X, formerly Twitter.
The woman, who has not been identified by Taufiq or on social media, left the bus and spoke to United employees, the video shows, and another passenger can be heard vouching for the family. Afterward, Taufiq said that he saw the woman again at baggage claim glaring at them, but that was the last he saw or heard of her.
Since the incident, he said he hasn’t heard anything from United, which he had hoped would take action against her or offer to remedy the situation somehow. He said the family was considering reporting the incident to the FBI, since the harassment began while the plane was in the air, but they don’t have the woman’s name.
“We don’t really know where things are,” he said. “I haven’t heard a peep out of United.”
United declined to comment on the video. “We don’t have any additional information to share,” its team said in an email.
Taufiq said the hardest part of the experience has been explaining racism to his kids for the first time. His 11-year-old, who was the original target, has been the most upset, he said, while his 8 and 4 year old haven’t fully processed it.
But the outpouring of support he’s received from the South Asian community and beyond has been heartening, he said.
“He didn’t understand why people hated Indian people. … There’s not really any way to make sense of it,” he said, referring to his oldest son. “It’s very overwhelming, but I have to say our community has come together pretty quickly. Celebrities shared it. They really went to bat for us. I know there’s more good people in the world than not.”
