Racist Attack on Sikh-American Girl In New York

New York: Close on heels of series of racist attacks, yet another Sikh-American girl was harassed by a US man, mistaking her to be from the Middle East, shouted "go back to Lebanon" and "you don't belong in this country".

The victim Rajpreet Heir was taking the subway train to a friend's birthday party in Manhattan when the man began shouting at her. She recounted her ordeal in a video for a Times section called 'This Week in Hate', which highlights hate crimes and harassment around the country since the election of President Donald Trump.

She said she was looking at her phone when the white 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."

Rajpreet, a Sikh, said she was born 30 miles from Lebanon, not the Middle Eastern country but a namesake city in the American state of Indiana.

"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.

The report added that two fellow passengers stepped in to help Rajpreet after the incident on the train. One woman tapped her on the shoulder and asked 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," Rajpreet said.

The report said the anti-harassment group Hollaback has received nearly double the usual number of reports of harassment on the subway and more than usual involve racist, Islamophobic or anti-immigrant comments since the election of Trump.

Rajpeet's case is a yet another disturbing incident of racial discrimination in which people of South Asian origin have been targets of abuse and hate crime.