NEW YORK: A Sikh-American girl faced harassment on a subway train when a white man, mistook her to be from the Middle East and allegedly shouted “go back to Lebanon” and “you don't belong in this country.” Rajpreet Heir was on her way to a friend's birthday party in Manhattan when the white man began shouting at her.
She recounted the ordeal in a video for a media section. She said she was looking at her phone when the man shouted at her saying, “Do you even know what a Marine looks like? Do you know what they have to see? What they do for this country? Because of people like you.” He said he hoped she was sent “back to Lebanon” and used expletives. Heir, born 30 miles from Lebanon, the American state of Indiana, not the country, said she saw a young white woman in the train staring at her “with tears in her eyes” as the man left the train. “What had just happened provided evidence of what I had sensed beneath the surface for a long time- racism that can turn violent and lately does,” she said.
Two fellow passengers stepped in to help Heir after the incident on the train, and one woman asked her if she was all right. “That meant something because when you're a minority, you're so used to just experiencing things on your own,” Heir said.
The case comes as yet another reminder of racial discrimination that has increased since Trump's election. Last month, Indian-origin woman Ekta Desai posted a video online of an African-American man racially abusing her and calling her inappropriate names as she travelled on a subway.
