A San Diego Uber driver wants an apology from three unidentified passengers over coronavirus-centered harassment.
In a video posted to YouTube, the driver, known as AmeriCantonese91, recorded the incident on March 14. He was picking them up in Convoy, an Asian district in San Diego with Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, and other Asian restaurants.
At first, the passengers seemed friendly, greeting the driver while getting into the car, until one of them asked, “Where are you from?”
“I’m from Hong Kong,” he replied.
“Oh, nice! Coronavirus, so yeah,” one responds, to laughter of the other passengers, while the driver uncomfortably replies, “No, I don’t have it.”
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The passengers, all seemingly intoxicated, proceeded to ask him about the coronavirus and political situation in Hong Kong. Towards the end of the ride, one of the passengers seems to offer an olive branch, saying, “Dude, if you want to let us out, you can. It’s up to you. It’s fine.”
The driver proceeded to do so, but the passengers then “dropped his rating and left feedback of ‘service quality,'” according to HopClear.
In a video following the incident a week later, AmeriCantonese91 said he’s been an Uber driver for over four years, talking briefly about the racism he’s faced and said he was “still pretty shaken up,” adding he only took two more rides before retiring for the evening and crying at home.
During the ride, he said he was about to tell them, “If you’re going to be disrespectful to me, I’ll just pull over right now,” but when the front seat passenger told him he could kick them out, he took the opportunity.
Still, because the passengers left a bad rating, he believes that they “thought they were in the right,” and in a later video, demands an apology.
“Maybe you three are just racist to Asian people and are using this coronavirus outbreak as a reason to attack us,” he said. “If you have any remorse for what you did, please make an apology. Not only to me but to the people of Hong Kong and to the Asian community.”
He said the passengers, upon seeing the original video, filed a privacy claim due to their faces being visible. (The later videos have their faces blurred.)
He also angrily called the passengers out, calling them “worthless” and “ignorant.”
“Just because I told you I was from Hong Kong, just because I’m Asian, how could you assume I have coronavirus?” he asked.
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