What would you do?


January 1, 1970
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During a class break this week I asked my students to teach me something. This video is what they showed me.

WWYD (What Would You Do?) is a YouTube sensation. It takes an event from the news, in this case a black man being questioned by a member of the public simply because he was looking after white children, and recreates the scene using actors. Secret cameras in public places allow us to see ordinary citizensā€™ reactions to such a move.

Yes, the show is designed to inflame: itā€™s sensationalised, Americanised and dramatic. But it captivates my students, and Iā€™m still figuring out what they were trying to teach me.

Ultimately, this show seems to function as a test for the adult world. It enables people to see whether we would actually intervene in a case of injustice, or whether we would permit it to go unchallenged as a bystander. It checks on our citizenship by providing a blind assessment of our moral compass. This is particularly important for young people who have good reason to feel particularly vulnerable to everything from a misuse of police authority to a criminal attack. Would an adult actually step in to help?

At the heart of this fascination then, may be a kind of fear. A fear that many adults in our society actually canā€™t be depended on to do the right thing; that there might not be any good Samaritans left to cross the road. This show may be a pretty grim and sensationalist test of that suspicion, but it speaks directly to it.

Itā€™s uncomfortable viewing. Even though the ā€œunsuspectingā€ members of the public always seem to heroically intervene (in this video, someone fetches the manager, another asks the offender to ā€œget outā€), the thing that seems to stick with you is the original offence, the sense of indignity that the original event could ever happen and the open judgement of other peopleā€™s reactions to it.

But not all lessons are comfortable. Maybe on some level, thatā€™s what my students wanted me to feel. Maybe itā€™s a feeling they have to live with more than me. What should we all do when faced with that uncomfortable insecurity, that test of our commitment to others? When I go back to school this week, Iā€™ll be asking them.


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