The other day, when my wife boarded a bus at Grand Army Plaza, she saw an old man sitting near the driver. Chubby and cherubic, the old man seemed to be talking to himself. But his voice became louder and his face more and more mischievous. "They killed 3,000 people. Those Muslims wouldn't hurt a flea, not even a baby flea."
My wife looked around and saw, sitting near the old man, a strikingly beautiful young woman who was wearing an Islamic-style headscarf. Her face was calm as she looked straight ahead, her hands demurely in her lap. After a while she took her cellphone from her purse and photographed the old man. "How dignified she is," thought my wife.
When the bus reached the young woman's stop, she exited the bus, turned around, and shouted at her attacker, "I've got your picture on my cellphone, you fucking, racist bastard." The driver asked her to move aside, but she stood there, continuing to shout, the f-word in each breath. The driver threatened to call the police if she didn't move aside. "The police! You didn't hear what he was saying." But she did move, with a final shout, "Fascist pig!"
While the old man was abusing Muslims, my wife wondered if she ought to say something. But she concluded that the old man was deranged and that therefore there would be no point in speaking out. "The Muslims are taking the heat off the Jews," my wife thought, before remembering the saying attributed to the German pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984). "First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one to speak out for me."
It's not that my wife is afraid of speaking out. In a taxicab in Jerusalem, she listened to her Jewish driver abusing the Arabs. "They don't all want to kill us," she said. "I put my life in their hands every time I enter one of their cabs." This silenced her driver. But she didn't speak out this time because the old man was not, in her view, compos mentis. Had I been in her position I doubt that I would have said anything either, not because I thought the old man mentally disturbed but because I shrink from making a scene. Still, if no one says anything, if no one protests, does that lend legitimacy to the old man's vituperation? No one came to the young woman's defense, surely a failure she will not soon forget.
2010-2011 Anchises-an Old Man's Journal All rights reserved
Dear Anchises,
ReplyDeleteYou captured this scene very well. But more thoughts have run through my head since that ride. During the episode, I was sitting next to an African-American woman almost as elderly as I and as quiet and dignified as the young Muslim. When the scene was over, I turned to my seatmate and said, "She blew it. She was doing such a good job. She really answered him with her silence. And then she blew it." The older woman nodded.
But did she really agree with me? Perhaps she was thinking, "Don't we live in better times now--when a person who's attacked for their group can shout back insults with impunity?"
After all, I didn't think the young woman was crazy for insulting the man. Of course, she was insulting him as an individual for something he had actually done, while he was insulting all the believers in her religion. But why do I think he was crazy? Were the people who insulted Jews and thought they wanted to kill non-Jews crazy? What about the people who were afraid of African-Americans (that is,of at least half my fellow passengers?) and thought they all wanted to rape white women? Were they crazy? Maybe I should have said something? What's the law? Was his speech racist incitement? Is that legal? If I had said something, what could it have been? What I would have wanted to accomplish was to quiet the man as I had the Jerusalem taxi driver. Do your readers have any suggestions?
Your wife, Mrs. Anchises
I think you touched a highly sensitive issue. And your wife has added an interesting question. I would say that we should try to overcome our reticence of 'scenes' and be ready to be blunt if needed. I wholly agree with your wife's hypothesis in relation to the old African- American woman. In a democratic society, one should not be punished for expressing a full rejection of racist attitudes. It's true that one can reject racism in many ways, and it is not necessary to employ insults. Nevertheless, many times it is so difficult to react in a public environment, that one needs to shout instead of talking in order to overcome one's fear. I have lived through part if the military regime in Argentina, when it was dangerous to say a word against the regime.
ReplyDeleteI feel that in my thirty-three years in Israel I learned to respond to injustice and express my views in many circumstances, even in uncomfortable ones.
To my surprise, many times people around me agreed with me, or stayed silent. I have not felt in danger when saying what I think. Does it mean that I never feel afraid or have doubts and stay silent in front of injustice?
I wish it were so. In those circumstances, I become more aware of my weakness and more understanding towards others.