Young man's response to a bigot at the bus stop is staggeringly calm
Xenophobia is always ugly, but this might be the smoothest way to deal with it in public.
19-year-old Jerome Forbes had a conversation with an unnamed woman at a Brisbane bus stop, who clearly doesn't take kindly to him. The video was uploaded by his father, Jason Forbes, who also posted it on reddit.
Jason explained to Mashable Australia that conversation started after his son Jerome sat down to next to the woman at the bus stop, skateboard in hand on Monday.
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"He's quite a friendly guy, so he said to the lady 'hi, how are you going'," Jason said. Not receiving a friendly response back from the woman, Jerome wondered if he had offended her in some way. The conversation eventually moved to the topic of immigration.
"We've been overrun by foreigners," the woman says in the video. Jerome asks what she means, when the woman directs her issue to him, who isn't what many would call a white Australian. "Well, what do you think you are?" she asks.
Bewildered, Jerome explains that he was born in the country. That doesn't convince the woman one bit. "Well, I don't believe that you were. If you believe so, okay," she says.
Jerome, clearly bemused, asks why would it matter where he was born. He explains that his father Jason from New Zealand, to which the woman says his father should go back to where he came from.
While Jason said he is from New Zealand, Jerome's mother is actually a sixth generation Australian. Jason said he was more annoyed about what had happened compared to his son.
"He handled it pretty well, but he was a bit deflated. He couldn't believe that it had happened, but I was more wound up than him," he admitted. But Jason reveals that incidents like these never happen to him, and that he doesn't know any Australians that are like the woman in the video.
"All we've had is nothing but warm and welcoming people. You're always going to get the odd nutter," Jason said. "She may have had mental issues. Who knows what situation the lady might have been in."
The video has since more than 470,000 views at the time of writing. Jason believes there is something to be learnt from Jerome's calm response to bigotry in the video.
"I think there's a positive message in there. We don't need to pour vitriol on the fire and get angry back. You know, the way my son dealt with it was quite noble," Jason said.
"I hope this lady went home that day and had a think about it, and maybe think 'geez, maybe I was a bit extreme with the young boy.' I don't want it to be another racist Australia beat-up, because racism exists everywhere around the world. Even in New Zealand as well," he said.
