‘Why do we have to bend over backward?’: Man lectures women for not speaking English in Canada in TikTok video

A woman captured the moment a man subjected a group of Asian women to racist remarks at a train station in Canada.

Donna Damaso uploaded the clip to TikTok on Sunday of a masked man berating two women for not speaking English during their conversation at the Brighouse station on the Richmond Canada Line. According to Damaso, the incident happened on Aug. 11.

“It was my first time encountering that kind of situation,” she told CTV News. “He is harassing the women so I decided to speak up and tell him it’s not right and he’s a racist.

In Damaso’s clip, the man can be heard lecturing the women to speak in English because they are in Canada. When Damaso approaches them and calls the man out for being a racist, he repeatedly denies being one. At one point, he claims be a lawyer.

According to the man, his “mother tongue is French,” and he was “born, raised and educated here.”

Damaso then tells the man that he didn’t have “the right to tell people” what language they could speak.

Undeterred, the man shoots back: “If we have to bend over backward to accommodate, then that’s a problem. Why do we have to bend over backwards? You move to Japan, you speak Japanese.”

The man asks Damaso repeatedly why she doesn’t care about the women speaking another language as they try to walk away.

Damaso and the Asian women finally separate themselves from the man as they make their way up the escalator to the platform. The man can be seen in the clip in the distance going over to his bicycle.

Damaso’s video has so far racked up over 366,000 views on TikTok and nearly 25,000 likes. Many of the comments commended Damaso for standing up to the man, while others berated the man for claiming he was a lawyer.

The incident brings to mind a similar racist tirade last year by a man who also claimed to be a lawyer and graduate from McGill.

Featured Image via @donnamlu

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