How to stand up for strangers.
A few days ago, I watched a video shot by a Montrealer of Asian descent in which a man verbally abused her in the metro. At one point, he made his hand into the shape of a gun and pretended to shoot her in the head, shouting, “Fck Chinese democracy, Fck Japan!” (en français) while repeatedly trying to slap the phone out of her hand.
Nobody helped her.
It’s three days later, and I am still triggered — angry — at every.single.person who watched and did nothing. Don’t tell me that they didn’t intervene because he appeared to be mentally unstable. It is because he was likely unstable that someone should have stood next to her and asked, are you alright? Do you need help?
So I searched for How to Help a Stranger in Danger, and there is surprisingly little information online about how to intervene when a stranger is being harassed, but the one thing they say is this: do.not.do.nothing.
Many of you might be thinking: maybe they were afraid, maybe they have their own worries and couldn’t face helping her. If the situation had escalated, that girl’s injuries would be part of our morning newsfeed, amplifying our shared sense of hopelessness, filling our social media with yet another hashtag. My point is that it catches up to us when we abandon each other, because we are each other’s worries. It is the lives of our neighbours that feed the news cycle.
According to Statistics Canada, hate crimes against Asian Canadians in Canada’s major cities have increased by 600–700% since March 2019.
Yesterday, with this incident in mind, I walked past a couple with a puppy at their feet. A man got out of his car, from which we could hear a dog barking furiously, ‘Man, I’d like to trade dogs with you’ he said to the couple with the puppy, ‘I guess this one was Made In China!’ and he laughed. I turned around and despite my daughter trying to drag me away, I heard myself saying, ‘That’s actually not funny. There’s a lot of hate aimed at Asians right now, and jokes like that really don’t help’, and kept walking.
It was just a joke. Why get involved, it was harmless. Right? Wrong.
Studies on genocide and racial violence show that hate takes its root — like a nasty weed — in the cracks of our communities: it begins as subtle bias, cultural jokes, racial stereotypes. So what once was a rude but somehow-socially-acceptable joke about consumer goods from China is now a spark contributing to a growing racism against Asian Canadians.
Take a look at the Pyramid of Hate below — ask yourself whether any of your behaviours appear on it — because one thing normalizes the next thing, as we move from hilarious Made in China jokes to less hilarious FB groups in which I see people of Asian descent asking to be accompanied on the subway, for fear of being attacked.
Maybe I sound preachy, but it’s up to all of us — especially those of us who are the most privileged and the least targeted — to question these once socially acceptable biases with our kids and friends. It’s safe to assume that we will each face a conflictual situation one day, either as the victim or as the bystander.
Let’s teach our children how to intervene lovingly in each other’s lives in moments of danger and fear. More importantly, let’s teach them to accept and learn from each other’s differences, so that they don’t become each other’s sources of danger and fear. Pluralism is the goal: the welcoming and acceptance of our differences, while contributing to a shared vision of a loving society.
Normally I dislike #calloutculture because it’s used as a kind of social media pepper spray to spit our anguish into the public space in the form of righteous anger. A callout is a scalpel — to be used selectively and with a precise objective, or to expose a rot. But I am (lovingly) calling out each and every one of us: if you stand by and watch another person being harmed and do absolutely nothing to help, you bear a responsibility for the harm that befalls them.
You may justify turning away from injustice that day with the usual excuses: “I was late for a meeting and couldn’t stop to help’’, or ‘’I’m sure someone else will help’’. But think back on your life: these moments are what your most traumatic memories are made of. We never forget the shame of letting a fellow human being suffer in front of us. And we never forget the feeling of being shamed or abused publicly, either.
One day you or I will be the one in need, and we do not want an audience for our suffering, we want to be surrounded by benevolent citizens, ready to give what they would want in the same situation: help.
Here are some tools:
How to be a Loving Citizen and a Brave Bystander: the 5D’s.
- Distraction: derail the incident by distracting from it. Focus is on the person being harassed, not the harasser. Recommendations include asking for directions or the time, or pretending to know the person being harassed.
- Delegation: ask for help from a third party.
- Documentation: first, assess if anyone else is helping the person. If not, use one of the other D’s. If not, document, but NEVER post without asking the person affected for permission.
- Direct: you may choose to directly name what is happening to the aggressor. Assess your safety before taking this step, as the aggressor may shift their abuse towards you. Keep it short, do not engage in debate or dialogue.
- Delay: if you can’t act in the moment, help the person afterwards. Offer to accompany them to their destination, to share your documentation, ask if they’re ok.
All these tips and more from ihollaback.org and available here.
