Wichita teen turns hateful slur into a powerful message

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — A Wichita teenager got international attention after facing hate at work last month. Since then, he has been doing what he can to ensure it doesn’t happen to other young people.

Noah Bierig is a waiter at Bubba’s 33 near Town East Square. He is also gay. Last month, while waiting on some customers, he noticed the glares they were giving him.

“I knew that these people probably didn’t agree with who I was as a person, but I figured that it wasn’t going to get to me, that I was going to give them the best service that I possibly can, and hopefully, I might just change their ways through that,” he said. “That didn’t really happen.”

Faced with hate

“Every time I walked away, it was hard to ignore the laughing that I would hear from that table,” he said. “When they were paying, they were being pretty rude about that as well, just a bunch of laughing about who I am as a person even though they don’t know me.”

When Bierig picked up the receipt, he found a homophobic slur instead of a tip.

“What I saw on that receipt did hurt me,” he said. “It was just completely unexpected, out of the blue, not something that I would expect to see on a regular Sunday.”

He sent a photo of the receipt to his mother, who posted it on social media almost immediately.

“How do you help your kid who turned 19 last week and is a waiter deal with this?” she asked.

Her son’s response was very mature.

“I didn’t want to be brought down to his level,” Bierig said. “I wanted to do good in the world of hate that he seems to want to inspire.”

Others respond

Bierig said his mother’s Facebook post got thousands of shares.

“My name has been brought up internationally. I’ve been on the Daily Mail UK. An icon such as Andy Cohen has talked about me on his late night show. It’s been absolutely insane.”

Money started coming in.

“Just out of nowhere, I started having donations come through to me personally, and it was incredible to see.”

Bierig said Chris Pumpelly with Proud of Wichita Inc., the LGBT Chamber of Commerce, contacted him.

“We all know that there was an unnecessary hateful slur that was left instead of a tip. We saw that as offensive just because it was ridiculous, it was unnecessary, it was hurtful,” Pumpelly said. “Wichita is not the community that stands by and says we’re going to let people do silly stuff like this and let it go unchallenged.”

“He had the amazing idea to set up a donation page specifically, and we put that out there, also on my mom’s Facebook page, and a ton of people just donated,” Bierig said.

Giving to others

Bierig did not want the money for himself. He wants to help other gay youth who may be fighting discrimination.

“It was my mom’s idea. She just told me about this cool charity she had found when she was looking, called GLSEN , and she told me exactly what it was,” he said.

GLSEN Kansas is a chapter of a national organization that works with K-12 educators and students. It improves the educational environments for LGBTQ youth and educators and works to prevent bullying.

“I did some research on the help they did at schools. There was a GLSENing club at my own high school, which I didn’t even know about,” Bierig said. “I know that if I did know about that, it would help me incredibly in high school, so if I didn’t get that, I’ll give others the opportunity.”

On Friday, Bierig presented GLSEN with a check for $2,200. The memo on the check says Love Wins.

“I really admire Noah’s courage to putting the message out there so that people understand the realities of how hateful and how harmful and ignorant people can be,” Will Rapp, GLSEN chapter managing director, said. “Those instances don’t always get reported, and because of this situation where Noah stepped forward, that courage has led to a very positive thing with the funds that were raised and Noah’s decision to donate them.”

He said the restaurant is also donating to GLSEN.

“They don’t support that type of behavior on behalf of their customers, so we do appreciate that additional support as well on behalf of Noah,” Rapp said.

Bierig’s message for others

Bierig said he could not be more proud of being part of the LGBTQ community and offered advice for other young people.

“Keep your head up. You’re never going to be alone. You’re always going to have some sort of support system that you can find. It’s important to not let that hate get to you. That’s only going to bring you down further from where you want to be,” he said. “Find the people that will support you.”

He is glad that a moment of hate has become something good for the community.

“I know stuff like this happens everywhere,” Bierig said. “I feel that being able to spread this message and showing how far something like this can come off of one word that he wrote on a receipt, I think that’s just going to do so much better for this country, for the world. I think that getting this out will spread so much positivity, as much positivity as possible, and that’s all I wanted.”

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