No More Bystanding

It was a sweltering hot summer day—the smell of freshly bloomed flowers and body odor intermingled in the still air; those brave enough to venture outside were marked by the unforgiving weather: their clothes clung to their sweaty, sticky skin, and remnants of sunscreen dripped down their faces, stinging their red, irritated eyes. I was barely a teenager at the time, uncomfortable in my body on the best of days, so these conditions were far from ideal. I had spent a long and tiring afternoon shopping with my dad and we were now at our last stop: Ross, a chain clothing store not far away from our home. Boy were we ready for the day to be over—the only thing keeping us from one gloriously unopened tub of mint chip ice cream tucked away in our freezer was the excruciatingly slow moving line we found ourselves stuck in.

Bright, unrelenting, sunlight streamed in from the transparent doors in front of us. My dad, who had been slowing losing his patience as moments turned into minutes, wearily stepped out of the line to get a clearer view of the checkstand. Barely a minute had passed, when a middle-aged woman—wearing khaki capris and a short-sleeved blouse embroidered with painted orchids—turned around and bluntly told him to "STAY IN LINE!" When my dad calmly explained that he was only trying to find out what was causing the hold up, she responded furiously, “Why don’t you go back to where you came from?” Time seemed to slow down and, in the space between thought and action, my dad and I spun in circles, searcing the faces of the summer worn shoppers around us; sadly, all we found there was endless apathy.

You may have heard of a phenomenon called the bystander effect wherein people are less likely to intervene in an situation when there are other people present. Social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley conducted research in the 60s and early 70s testing this very theory, coming to some pretty significant conclusions. There are two main factors, they determined, that affect people’s actions in a crisis: social influence and diffused responsibility. Social influence is generally understood to be the instinct to look to others for their reactions to an event, in order to both better understand the event itself and to decide whether or not to act. Diffused responsibility, on the other hand, explains how an individual’s perception and acknowledgement of their own personal responsibility in an event is influenced by the number of people present. As a result of these powerful social dynamics, people (such as those present in Ross that summer day) may be witness to numerous differing emergencies, distressful events, and discriminatory behavior and yet ultimately chose not to act. Latané and Darley created a five-step model explaining the process which determines such decisions:

Now, let’s take a step back for a moment. It’s at this point that it would be quite understandable if you’re questioning where this is all going, on a website called Cats Love Muslims authored by someone named “mhd.” Well, allow me to introduce myself—yes, my name is mhd, which is how I’ve chosen to transliterate مُحَمَّد (pronounced muh-hum-ehd) and I’m a multidisciplinary artist and activist. I’ve spent most, if not the entirety, of my early-stage artistic career reflecting on numerous topics, none of which included my personal experiences as a BIPOC (Black, Indigineous, and People of Color) and Muslim man, or the experiences of fellow Muslims and BIPOC community members. In short, I’ve been a bystander to my own struggle and to the struggles of many others; simply put, that ends today. I'm picking up my pen and joining the fight for liberation—liberation from oppression, forced assimilation, subjugation, and despair. I hope you will join me as I follow Latané and Darley's model of helping through to the very end and take action.

Bystander effect | Causes & Consequences

Bystander effect, the inhibiting influence of the presence of others on a person’s willingness to help someone in need. Research has shown that, even in an emergency, a bystander is less likely to extend help when he or she is in the real or imagined presence of others than when he or she is alone.

Encyclopedia Britannica

Bystander Effect and Diffusion of Responsibility

Take-home Messages The bystander effect, or bystander apathy, is a social psychological theory that states that an individual’s likelihood of helping decreases when passive bystanders are present in an emergency situation. The most frequently cited

Udochi EmegharaSimply Psychology