“The plague of racism insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams”- Maya Angelou.
It’s about time that society realises that racism isn’t a localised problem – affecting only certain races and nationalities – but a plague that has spread far and wide. Be it north, south, east or west – we all have negative biases which reflect in all our “Pathan jokes” or even something as seemingly insignificant as calling someone “choori”, or even in what should have been a civil interaction between a passenger and a cab driver.
Jemima recently took to Twitter to share a video of a Pakistani-British cab driver who encountered a racist passenger. The video shows the British passenger abusing the cab driver for his ethnicity saying “Who do you think you are? You think you’re something special? Pakistan! But I’ll tell you what? No wonder the Indians are bombing you!”
The cab driver kept his cool, went on to look inside his bag as if he were looking for change and calmly responded “I don’t think about who I am. Have fun.”
But the passenger was relentless and continued, taking the abuse up a notch “By the way, this is England! And you’re in a f****** job in England! So you should respect this country.” Here is the video:
The driver went on to let the passenger know that he would upload this video on Facebook so that the world could hear what he has to say. But the passenger, unapologetically, continued, “You think I give a flying f***?”
The driver then asked him to leave the cab since he had handed over the change and while getting off, the passenger continued to abuse the driver for belonging to a “Muslim” country.
In response to this video, Jemima had only good things to say about the way the cab driver dealt with the situation:
The more heart warming thing is the response the cab driver had to this incident even after:
“I did request from Police not to take any further action as I forgive him and don’t want to pursue this case any further. The support I have got from all our the country and from all communities for me this is more then enough. Thank you all”. This just shows how love makes the world go round – and sometimes, some people can have the courage to respond to hate with love.