ABC newsreader with a penchant for vibrant neckties, Jeremy Fernandez, took to Twitter yesterday to share what he’s describing as his Rosa Parks moment, in which he was subject to awful racial abuse from another parent while travelling on a bus with his two-year-old daughter through Sydney’s Inner West.

In an article on The Drum elaborating on the morning’s events on, Fernandez paints a portrait of the incident as vivid as one of his signature ties; but instead of a delightful paisley number that knows only joy and is woven using ethically-sourced silk in a palette of colour akin to the rainbow of life, it’s a horrifying account of the kind of horrifying, disgusting behaviour and the archaic views that, like a double-Windsor knot pulled too high, are still choking parts of Australia in 2013.


The fifteen minute encounter arose when the woman’s daughter began “flicking and pinching” his daughter from the seat behind. When Fernandez turned around to address her for flicking his arm, the girl’s mother launched into tirade of abuse in which she called him “a black c***”, a paedophile, told him to go back to “[his] own country” and threatened to have him dragged off the bus and assaulted.

To add insult to injury, upon alighting from the bus the driver told him it was his “fault, mate. You could have moved.”

State Transit are investigating the incident further.

You can read the full account here.

The highly-publicised incident, one that Fernandez notes “isn’t unique or even rare”, follows on from another captured on film late last year involving awful Australians hurling abuse at French tourists aboard a bus. 

#smh

via The Australian

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