I was already seated on the bus when an elderly Black woman
got on, handed the driver her transfer and proceeded to find a seat. The driver called her back, quietly. He told her that the transfer was no
good. In a soft-spoken manner that
befitted her green straw hat and green cotton gloves, she argued in her
defense. The bus driver, whose posture I
guessed was naturally stooped, bent over the huge steering wheel of the bus
with his shoulders hunched.
As the
passengers sat bored, some slightly curious, others after-work-tired, the old
woman perched on the edge of a seat next to me and searched, fruitlessly,
through her purse for change.
I sat
motionless while my heart screamed for the hero in the bus driver’s uniform to
take the coins from his pocket, drop them in the box, smile at the old woman
and speed us on to our destinations; while the mostly white audience sat
humbled and awestruck by the magnitude of a Black man’s spirit. But alas, it
was not to be. Although his posture and
expression belied his gruff manner of speaking (after all, she could have been
his mother), the bus driver had taken a stand and Black men cannot afford to
back down these days – not even to old Black women.
Just before
the bus pulled away, she got up and asked to be let off stating: “I’m not
paying another 35 cents.” The driver
opened the doors and I watched the green hat disappear.
It was once again time for me to
call up my resentment for all of the history, the elements that prevented the
bus driver and the old woman from recognizing that they were the same person.
By now, the
driver had spotted me and was trying to make eye contact in his huge rearview
mirror. A few blocks later, I pulled the
cord and stood up. He watched me walk
towards the doors and as they slowly opened, I stepped down. He waited much longer than necessary to close
the doors behind me. When I looked back,
he smiled and nodded his head in approval.
But I couldn’t respond, today.
After all, he didn’t like me when I had on my green hat.
20 September 1976/TODAY
A couple months ago, I shared this long ago occurrence with my chosen
son, Meeko, and I told him I was going to change the date from 1976 to
1976/Today – he understood, immediately.
What neither of us knew was how prophetic and how spot on, unrighteously
real that statement would turn out to be.
A few weeks later YouTube gave a world’s eye view of the uppercut of
the century, when a 59 year old Cleveland RTA bus driver cold-cocked a 25 year
old female passenger aboard the #5 bus headed up Chagrin Blvd. It was, literally, the shot heard around the
world. News reporters and
everybody-at-large has given their opinion as to whether or not the bus driver
was right or wrong to unload on the over-the-top-she-asked-for-it-assaulted-him-first-woman. I won’t bother to give my opinion here. Instead, I’ll leave you with this question:
“Are we better off now than we were almost 40 years ago?”
We shake our fists at the Whitehouse and demand better and more, more,
more. What have we (excluding no gender
or ethnicity) done to prepare ourselves for better and more? Who are we, really? There have been all kinds of technological
and medical advances in the past four decades; but what has changed (for the
better) in the hearts of women and men?
The sad, occurrence aboard the RTA in Cleveland
was not an isolated abhorrence – it was everyday in the USA
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