A grateful mother is searching for the heroic Dublin Bus driver who kicked a racist woman off his bus. The woman had been aiming racial slurs at her 9 year old son.
The racist proceeded to aim vile comments like “Go back to your own country” and “You’re not Irish”. The woman shouted the “not Irish” slur because the boy was wearing a green top, according to his mother, who is from Brazil. She has been living in Ireland for 12 years.
Not an isolated incident:
The mother, said that this is not an isolated incident of racism she has experienced.
“It’s not the first time I have experienced something like this but it’s the first time I have been brave enough to report it”.
She added, “I was with my son. We got on the bus. He had a loud tone of voice, he was a reading an advert on the bus about coronavirus”.
“There were not many people on the bus, so everybody could hear what he was reading”.
She continued, “The woman wearing a mask who was sitting on the second last seat on the row, started looking back and saying ‘what are you saying about coronavirus?”
“And when they are looking back, they are looking at my son, they are focusing all their attention on him and directing all the speech at my son who is only a child, he is only nine”.
The incident:
The boy’s mother said that the woman was asking the boy the same question about coronavirus before things took a hostile turn.
She said, “She was saying ‘This is a serious issue, people are dying around the world and you’re making a joke about it,’ but he wasn’t making a joke, he was reading facts on the advert”.
She continued, “Then the woman at the very end of the row, who wasn’t wearing a mask, started saying ‘Go back to your home country, take the green off your clothes,’ because my son was wearing a green jacket and hat”.
She added, “You’re not Irish, you’re not Irish,’ she kept saying, ‘Go back to your home country”.
“I remained quiet the whole time because I was scared that if I reacted things would have escalated” the mother said.
Heroic Dublin Bus Driver:
The Dublin Bus driver walked over to tell the racist woman along with another hostile passenger to get off the bus. He wanted them to take the rest of their journey on foot.
The mother hailed the bravery of the bus driver. “It didn’t last long in reality but it felt like it went on forever. They got on at O’Connell Street but the driver had kicked them off by the time we got to O’Connell bridge”, she said. This brave intervention was also praised by a Facebook page for People Before Profit.
“The bus driver took action very fast. But nobody else was eager to help. One man was eating his blueberries and his muffin and pretending as if nothing was happening”.
She added, “It’s understandable, in those situations it’s hard to know what to do, but the bus driver was brilliant”.
Despite the brave act, the mother said she would be reluctant to go public with this.
“I would fear going public because I need to protect my son. If I was to expose myself and my child, I would be open to even more hate speech being lashed in my direction” she said.
More Dublin Bus news here.
