Someone called me ni---r on the bus the other day. There was hate in his eyes, contempt in his soul, and venom on his lips where my fist should have been.
It happened on the suburban bus I take twice a week to teach an undergraduate class in journalism.
The drama began when the misanthrope missed his bus and ended up on mine, in a seat next to me. When he took out his phone and began scrolling, I assumed he was checking bus schedules. But I was wrong.
Then he began reading. Out loud.
It sounded like an antisemitic manifesto. Everything he read was about Jews. Jews run this company. Jews run that company. Each paragraph he read had the same message: Jews were evil. And he wanted everyone on the bus to know it.
After about five minutes — it was probably only two — I had had enough. I politely asked him to read to himself. I didn’t want to hear him. “But you need to hear this,” he insisted. “This is the truth.”
I spoke a little more loudly. I was a little more annoyed. I told him I didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. I told him I had my own reading to do. There were other people on the bus. A diverse crowd of commuters. No one else said a word.
We were sitting behind the driver. He didn’t say anything, either.
The man started reading out loud again. More Jewish hate.
Was I offended? Yes. But to be totally honest, he could have been reading the comics or the classified ads, and I still would have been upset. How do you sit next to someone on a public bus and think it’s OK to start reading out loud?
So, I raised my voice again. This time the whole bus could hear me. I told him he was being an a-----e. Because he was.
And that’s when it hit the fan. “I didn’t call you any names, ni---r.” He said it twice. Like I didn’t hear him the first time.
I visualized my fist in his face. Over and over again. Then I visualized missing my class — and getting arrested for assault. I told him to shut the f—k up and leave me alone.
He went back to reading. Quietly this time. Then he moved to the back of the bus.
It was suggested to me later that maybe I helped bring this on myself, that I should have avoided talking to a stranger and just moved to another part of the bus. Since I’m not Jewish, the person said, I shouldn’t have been offended, and that by confronting him and calling the man an a------e, I provoked him.
Wrong. He provoked me. And everybody on the bus.
I didn’t kick his ass, like I probably should have done. But I did stand up to the bully, and stopped him from spewing his hate. For a few minutes, anyway.
He got off the bus before I did, and when he left, another passenger, who witnessed the whole ordeal, finally spoke up. “Who was that? Donald Trump?”
Oh, now he has something to say.
I ignored him, but I thought about what he said. I’m a Black journalist in New York City. It wasn’t the first time I’ve been called ni---r.
I’ve interviewed Donald Trump before. This wasn’t about Donald Trump. He never called me ni---r to my face.
Leonard Greene is a columnist for the New York Daily News. His previous article as “The man who gave America Malcolm X.”
First Published: March 15, 2023, 4:00 a.m.
