Someone named Aileen Su referred to a black applicant for a government of Ontario job as "ghetto dude." That set off a firestorm. Aileen Su has been pilloried on Facebook. Trouble is, people are pillorying the wrong Aileen Su.
This Aileen Siu is a graduate in tourism and business at Ryerson University and works for a private company. She isn't remotely related to the other Aileen, who left her job at Queen's Park on Monday (whether by firing or resignation isn't clear).
But all this week she's been frantically trying to get bloggers and website hosts to repair her reputation and take her Facebook photo off their sites.
"I do not work in the cabinet and just because I have the same name as the person in the newspaper, that doesn't mean it's me," said Siu, 25. "I do not appreciate my name being tarnished because of some other person's mistake.
"There are many people with the exact name and it wouldn't be right to target everyone with that name."
Siu said she didn't give it much thought when she heard about the other Aileen and her email to applicant Evon Reid in last weekend's Toronto Star. "We just happened to have the same name," she mused then.
But by Monday, when friends and relatives began calling her family about it, she knew she was in trouble. Her Facebook account had garnered more than 30 nasty emails, and bloggers were posting a photo and personal profile lifted from it in chat rooms.
"My sister and the other Aileen are about the same age, both from Toronto," said her infuriated older sister, Wan-ling, one of three children born in Canada to immigrant parents from Hong Kong.
"People see that and think that she's the one, saying she's a racist, which is absolutely not true."
Online writers have labelled her with slurs of their own and compared her to a pet dog in her photo. "Who's the asian chick with aileen? sorry. couldn't resist," wrote one.