Watch the video, which has gone viral.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: A Sikh boy getting bullied: not anything new in the US, which has seen members of the community murdered, brutalized, racially taunted, harassed and bullied, their property vandalized, since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, more than 13 years ago. Men, women, children, young and old, none have been spared cruel indignities, with intolerant backlash from ignorant racists continuing unabated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIv7cpCY_M8
Yet, even the most hardened of hearts cannot steel itself to the video uploaded by a young Sikh boy in Georgia, who recorded the racial venom directed towards him on a school bus. The video has gone viral since it was uploaded, viewed more than 500,000 times on various websites.
The details of the Sikh boy, identified as Harsukh Singh by Inquisitr, who broke the story, remains a mystery. A young white girl who taunts him mercilessly, sitting two rows behind on the school bus, is visible enough in the video to be recognized soon. Disciplinary action is likely to follow against her, and other students who indulged in the racially-fuelled bullying and discrimination.
What is heartening though is that the Sikh boy does not cower or stay silent to the merciless bullying by the girl. The girl gets up from her seat and shouts at him “terrorist, terrorist,” almost in an admonishing tone, pointing her finger at him to accentuate the taunt.
The boy, in spectacles, and wearing a patka, sitting on his own in a crowded school bus, tells the camera recording the incident: “Kids being racist to me.” “Quit filming us” the girl hollers, but the boy doesn’t back down. “I can’t if you’re being racist to me,” he replies, before swearing at her and shouting in exasperation “who cares? I don’t care” – probably to the same taunt of ‘terrorist”, or worse, the words lost in background noise emanating from the bus.
Singh apparently uploaded the video on YouTube under the name ‘Nagra Nagra’ with the accompanying message: ‘Kids being racist to me and calling me an Afghan terrorist. Please don’t act like this towards people like me. If you don’t know, I’m not Muslim I’m Sikh.’
The video has since then been made private on YouTube, but it continues to proliferate on other sources. A comment on Reddit perhaps summarized the plight of the victim: “What made me sad is that he’s putting on a very brave face and saying that he doesn’t care, but inside his heart and spirit are dying a little bit… Source: I was the fat kid with a similar brave face.”
It’s worse to think what continuous racial bullying like this does to the psyche of a child, who is in a similar plight anywhere else in the US, or in any part of the world, for that matter.
The American Bazaar reported earlier of a new comic book featuring a Sikh superhero, Deep Singh, as ‘Super Sikh’. Read that story:
Super Sikh: new comic book superhero Deep Singh, with a turban
Perhaps that is the only solution left for the Sikh community to defend itself against racism and discrimination. A superhero descends to save victims from the clutches of mean, nasty talk and worse behavior.