Jim Hardie of Lacey, Wash., was riding the bus after a long day of searching for employment when a group of teens seated near him began referring to white women as “white b—-es” and using the N-word.
Hardie decided to voice his displeasure with what he described to reporters as “disrespectful” behavior on the part of the group of teens.
“Given the nature of what we’ve gone through with the word ‘n—er,’ it’s not appropriate to loosely throw that word around or refer to white women as white b—-es, and I’d appreciate if they stopped that,” Hardie can be heard saying on the bus’s security video.
The teens beat him up before exiting the bus.
“I put myself at risk to protect everybody,” Hardie told King 5 News. The video shows fellow passengers applauding him after the incident.
According to Hardie’s brother, Jeffrey, who was not present during the incident, Jim Hardie made the bus safer with his decision to speak up.
“At the end of the day, everybody on that bus was safer; at the end of the day good prevailed,” Jeffrey said.
Jim Hardie has said he did not suffer any serious injury, and will not file a police report.
According to Hardie, who comes across in news reports as a genuinely nice guy, he acted out of a sense of civic duty. He says he wouldn’t have done anything any differently, but the truth is, if he intended to produce a positive outcome in that situation, the approach he used was doomed to fail.
The video clearly shows there were white girls traveling on the bus with these guys, and though Hardie may have thought he was defending the girls’ honor in some way, confronting these youngsters with an authoritative reprimand ultimately could serve no purpose other than to provoke an an ego confrontation. The situation could have ended very badly for Hardie’s fellow passengers if any of those guys had weapons, and if they were reckless and demented enough to use them.
The most constructive thing that will likely come from this incident is that this unemployed family man will be offered a job. –kathleen cross
