After a United Airlines flight from Cancun to Los Angeles, a passenger hurled racist insults at an Indian American family while enroute to the terminal from a bus gate. Wedding photographer Pervez Taufiq documented the confrontation with his family and the woman being called “Karen” and “LAX Karen” in some quarters.
According to Taufiq, the conflict began during the flight when the woman seated next to his 11-year-old son displayed irritation while he checked on the child. On arrival, things escalated. The woman interrogated the boy, asking if he was Indian and where he was from, before threatening to speak to his parents. On the shuttle bus, she snapped at the children to “shut up.”
The man caught the altercation on video. She says
Your family is from India, you have no respect, you have no rules, you think you can push everyone. You guys are f’ing crazy.
She also insulted Taufiq about… Indian food? She said she’d record his “f’ing tandoori ass” and she flashed her middle fingers and accused him of being “racist” for her out for her behavior. Need I mention that he and his family are U.S. citizens and born in the United States? Photographer Taufiq grew up in Boston. She says, though, that they’re “not American, not originally.”
United employees intervened. A bystander confirmed she was the instigator, and she was removed from the shuttle bus.
Taufiq claimed the woman appeared intoxicated both during and after the flight. Reportedly she has been banned from flying United. Katie Couric commented on his Instagram post:
Some people haven’t gotten the memo that the broadly anti-immigration incoming President’s Vice President married into an Indian family or that Indian-Americans currently or in the recent past have served as CEOs of Microsoft; Google; Chanel; Abobe; Pepsi; IBM; Arista Networks; and Novartis. Granted Starbucks didn’t turn out as well and IBM is a mess. But clearly the U.S. is benefiting from Indian outmigration.
It blows my mind that @JDVance's relatives look just like mine. 🙂
This is the greatness of America. pic.twitter.com/w4Xk1vFiEc
— Vivek Wadhwa (@wadhwa) November 30, 2024
Taufiq called it surreal and unexpected that he found his family at the center of this incident.
Another example of why more people need to be on the no-fly list.
BTW I wouldn’t call IBM “a mess”. I’ve done very well with their stock and the current CEO (an Indian American) has done a great job of focusing the company and growing stock value. He had to clean up the mess Ginny Rometty (a white woman) left him.
I’ve worked closely with Indians and Indian Americans throughout my 40 year IT career and found them to be very bright, dedicated and a benefit to companies that employed them. Also, Vance can value marrying into an Indian family and still not be in favor of open borders or illegal immigration. Republicans are not “anti-immigrant” we are anti ILLEGAL immigrant – huge difference.
Those Indian Americans may be Muslim. An Indian American woman once said, which I overheard, “never marry a Muslim from India…they cannot be trusted “.
I have been helped by Indians, but also exploited and ripped off by Indians.
I have been to India on business 3 times. It’s a terrible country that’s filthy.
Well I enjoyed the rich culture and history of India. You have to take the place as it is. Frustrating but just doing things in its own way. But naming Indians who did well is like the old listing of (insert minority) who are “credits to their race”. Why can’t we see each other as just…people?
Indians are very rude and pushy people. More and more people are seeing their entitled nonsense in public.
Absolutely atrocious behavior. I’m glad that airlines are finally taking the lack of civility seriously and banning people who exhibit that lack. Or at least hopefully they are, since the article isn’t clear whether she was banned or not, nor whether her husband was also banned.
So sad .
Not sure what the SAVE shareholders are looking for. The company was trading at near-BK levels for awhile; what did they think would happen in a Ch 11 reorg?
This woman is a nice example of a tRump voter.
We’re getting an Air India flight to DFW now.. I don’t see this as a positive. But I do see big sales for airport wheelchairs. Indians always want wheelchair help to the plane and they miraculously have no need for it when getting off.
@ Gary — How much you wanna bet that Taufiq voted for Orange Satan?
Every comment and the original post seem to be anti immigrant (anti Indian in this context).
Sign of the times, I guess?
This is what I tell others why voting orange will lead to more karens and kens, just like some of the posters here.
AndyS you tipped your racist hand. Come clean so Agent Orange can nominate you as Assistant to the Border Czar.
There are over 200 million Muslims in India. And many of the South Asian Muslim Americans are Indian Americans — not Pakistani-Americans and not Bangladeshi-Americans. This family is Indian-American, much like the great Indian-American comics Aziz Ansari and Hasan Minaj.
I find it pitiful and ridiculous when some European-Americans try to tell or view Asian-Americans or any other American of apparent non-European ancestry as something other than really American. Those of only Native American origin may have something to say about who is really native to America.
Indian Muslim Americans are more likely to be Democrats than Pakistani Muslim Americans or even Indian Hindu Americans nowadays.
JD Vance’s wife and her Indian Hindu American family have a long history of being Democrats and even anti-Trump (and pro-Biden) going into 2022.
India is not a race. There are multiple racial groups in India, including Aryan. If the rude woman is Aryan and her unfortunate victims are Aryan, this is not racism. Countryism may be a better term, but it’s not racism.
The woman is a bigot whether or not some DC_Consulting recognizes the woman’s behavior as racism.
By the way, people can be racist even against members of the same ethnic/national background as themself. It’s still racism.
Gary, I enjoy your blog and respect you – but I think Vance/Trump are FAR from anti-immigrant. They believe in the laws, and immigrants have pathways to enter the US, legally or not, thru a port of entry.
That’s all they’ve ever called for. No more just walking across our borders. No more open-amnesty “just because”. Funny that after Bad Orange Man’s tariff threats, Mexico is now clamping down on their own border and turning people around — didn’t Kamala have 4 years to have those talks?
And you know this – you’ve seen the articles about Air Peace flying ‘charters’ to Antigua from Africa, where almost every passenger is a one-way trip (and their destination is NOT the West Indies…). Not everyone walking across our southern border is impoverished or poor.
1.8 million deportation orders, yet only 2 or 3% have left.
How does anyone NOT know that everything they say and do in public will be saved on video and uploaded for everyone to see?
Alcohol, altitude and all the medication that fat white women is taking didn’t mix well.
The American Indian Dad had an opportunity to de escalate this and choose not to. Instead he made a fool of himself in front of his kids by egging this woman on.
Probably not the best dad and his kids are probably not well behaved. It’s all kind of a shame.
Kudos to that Indian-American passenger guy for documenting this incident in response to that woman’s abusive, bigoted behavior. But so sad that he and especially his kids had to experience that.
Equally sad that some of the comments here are equally bigoted.
Kudos? He looks and acts like a complete idiot. Only to be overshadowed by her.
Racists prefer that the targets of racism — including ethnic minority kids — accept the racism and tolerate it in silence. It’s good that the American dad and his kids learn that racism should be openly confronted and racists are sorry excuses for human beings and should go pound sand.
You haven’t truly experienced Indian culture until personally witness a little girl squat down, lift her dress, and poop in the aisle of a DEL-JFK flight.
Fun times.
Has Mike ever been on a flight out of DEL where that has happened? Sounds like a literally crappy story from a clueless person who hasn’t flown much out of DEL if they think that Indian females doing so in public on transport vehicles is Indian culture.
I have been on several hundred flights out of DEL, and not once have I ever seen such a scene on any of my flights out of DEL. But what would I know about Indian cultures. :rolleyes:
If the foreign immigrants are not American (that’s what she says), probably only the ”Native American” can be the real American. And she doesn’t look like Native American.
“…broadly anti-immigration…”
NO! Let’s get this straight, Trump is anti-ILLEGAL immigration. That was clear in his first term and during his recent campaign. He is also against allowing people to enter the USA who are from “suspect” or “special interest” countries, terms that the Biden Administration has used to describe persons entering the USA from places like Afghanistan, China, and Iraq, to name a few.
Tossing out broad statements like that is stereotypical in and amongst itself. I agree that Trump can be hard to talk, at times, and I’m not his biggest fan by any means, but let’s not attribute thing to him that aren’t accurate. Indeed, if you’d compare his comments with those of Hilary in 2016 and earlier, she actually sounds more radically anti-immigration that he does.
The family said it has changed its mind and is now going to sue the openly racist woman. This is primarily because the woman went public to try to blame the family while trying to hide because of some “since a brain injury….” excuse for her acting like this. Then I ask why is she still into drinking alcohol and why is her husband enabling her access to brain-altering alcohol.
Maybe the woman’s rabbi or other spiritual advisor can talk some sense into her, because her husband surely isn’t helping to check her racist lunacy.