It was one of those perky, sunny mornings that introduce spring to New York City. I was waiting at a crosswalk and blammo; a freckle faced young man plowed his bike right into me. He didn’t look crazy, so as I recovered from my stumble I met his eyes, presuming an, “Oh, excuse me” would be forthcoming. Instead, he looked at me, turned his head and then turned the front of his bike toward the intersection. It was downhill fast from there

“Excuse me, you just hit me with your bike.”

“Yeah?”

Now I’m heated. “Aren’t you going to at least say, “Sorry??”

“No!” he snaps.

The light changes, and he starts to peddle slowly across the six lane highway, I keep pace.

“Oh please! What, were you raised by wolves?”

“Shut up, nigger” he barks, now peddling a little faster.

Unsurprised, I reply, “Oh geez, is that the best you can do?”

“Okay, Oprah.”

“Oh, that’s really an insult, calling me a taste-making billionaire. Ouch.”

Freckles, now clearly flustered says, “Well…well…you blacks pay more for cars!”

I’m caught off guard, but ready with a smart-ass retort, “You idiot, my father owns a car dealership. I haven’t paid for a car in fifteen years!” And as he sped off, shaking his head and muttering in frustration, in my head, I did a happy end zone dance. I won…kind of. I still think about that incident now, almost a year later.

What draws me back to my encounter with Freckles, is not that it’s the most recent time I’ve been called a nigger. It’s happened since, and in Chinese no less. And it’s not that a usually rational adult like me can devolve in a New York minute into a teasing, taunting ten year old. Nor is it even that I have no relationship with my father and have had no contact with him for more than 20 years. Or that, to the best of my knowledge, my father is not now nor has ever been in the auto sales business. What’s interesting is that Freckles not only knew about the “black tax,” but he used it against me as a slur.

For the most part, academics agree that blacks in America face discrimination. And some have gone further to assert that costs associated with this discrimination can be quantified. This is known as ‘the black tax.’ ‘The black tax’ is the price black people pay in their daily encounters as the result of black stereotypes. This phenomenon has always been intrinsically understood by African Americans, but it was mainstream media’s focus on ‘the black tax’ in the early 1990’s, that brought it to the awareness of the larger culture. Programs like the ‘True Colors’ segment featured on ABC’s Primetime Live, are now used to teach tolerance. Ironically, that’s not the lesson Freckles got. For him and others like him, ‘the black tax’ is just more evidence that black folks are inferior.