Against the Social Norm

While running errands yesterday I had a "driveway moment" in the Walgreens drive-thru. For those of you who are unsure of what a "driveway moment" is, it happens when you are listening to NPR (National Public Radio)and the story they are talking about is too engaging to turn off, so you stay in your car and listen to the rest, even though you have reached your destination. Yesterday, my "driveway moment" caused me to sit in a parking spot and listen for 10 minutes rather than picking up my prescription by going through the drive-thru right away. I wanted to be able to give all of my attention to the story and I'm glad I did.

The story was about the 1930 lynching of two African American boys who were accused of shooting of a white man and raping his girlfriend in Marion, Indiana. This particular presentation of the story was engaging because they interviewed a woman and a man who were present at the mob lynching. They describe how things escalated from a few dozen people to thousands outside the courthouse calling for the boys to be handed over, and what was done to the boys by the mob. They also interviewed James Cameron, the third boy who was spared by the mob after having the rope around his neck.

My reaction to this story, guilt, anger, sadness, distress, sense of social justice, reminded me of how I felt when I read The Help by Katheryn Stockett. This book is written from multiple perspectives of black domestic servants and the white women who employed them in the early 1960s. This book looks at the relationships among these women and one white girl who wants to tell their stories. She wants the black women to be treated as equals to white women, which goes against societal norms.

In both of these stories, one non-fiction and the other fiction, I wonder which 'character' I would be. In the lynching story, the woman recalls seeing the mob and how they acted, from the perspective of an outside observer. She uses pronouns like 'they' and 'them' to describe something that she was witness to. She describes the actions like they were destined to happen and something she regretted seeing, but not something that could have been stopped. Similarly, there are white female characters in The Help who seem a bit uneasy about how the domestic servants are treated, but take that as the norm. They admit thinking that people won't change, so why try?

I can understand how people would feel like there is nothing to be done to change what society thinks and does. How would one woman change the actions of thousands who had already decided they were going to put justice in their own hands? Why would young white women go against their family and friends to treat black women as equals? One person can't change an entire society, right?

Probably not, but in each of these stories one person does make a difference for a few. In the 1930s lynching when the mob had the third boy, James Cameron, a man shouted above the crowd that he was innocent and he didn't have anything to do with the killing. The mob let Cameron go, and the actions of the one man saved his life. As far as the domestic servants in The Help, the white girl published the black women's stories and shined a light on abuses and injustices that were perpetuated by white employers.

So I keep finding myself asking, which person would I be? Would I be an "innocent bystander" who didn't participate in lynching, but didn't stop it either? Would I be the man who shouted above the crowd to try to save a person's life? Would I expose social injustices by writing about them and caring about those who society is oppressing?

I think we would all like to see ourselves as the one who sticks their neck out to help someone else, which is certainly the character I would cast myself as, but do we? Inequalities and social injustices are all around us, but what do we do about them? Poverty, persecution of immigrants (legal and illegal), gay rights...the list goes on. These are issues that society is facing now and actions can be taken by individuals. Looking back, we are appalled at how black people were treated and can't imagine ourselves taking part in it. But, in 40 years, will society look back and feel the same way about the exclusion of homosexuals from basic human rights? Will we talk in generalities using pronouns like "they" and "them" to describe these injustices? Or will we be able to say that we took action, however small, to make a difference?