Working with a young student in a café on a typically foggy day in San Francisco, I turned to face the street when her mother indicated that a fight was taking place. A group of young teenagers in the crosswalk, probably no more than 15 years old, were watching a boy stomp on the head of another boy lying in a fetal position on the pavement. It went on for a few minutes until a passing driver honked a horn, sending the group scattering down the hill.
A girl stood by with an uncertain look on her face, as if she didn’t know whether she should follow the group or stay with the boy. The boy slowly got to his feet and took a few steps, looking dazed, then, regaining himself, listed down the street in the opposite direction, the girl by his side. Not one onlooker tried to stop the fight, not pedestrians, café sitters, the girl, or me.
When I was 14, probably the same age as the girl, on an otherwise empty street in Glasgow at 6:30 am, I had tried to intervene when I happened upon two youths violently shoving each other. I stood by, waiting for a chance to make them stop.
Suddenly, sensing my presence, both youths swiveled in my direction with their fists up like they were about to start punching me. I fled as one of them snarled, “What are you looking at?”
When, more recently, at the end of my Restorative Justice class at the local jail as two students began throwing insults at each other that quickly escalated into vicious punches, I had also tried to intervene, first by attempting to stand between them and then by appealing to their higher selves. Restorative Justice is a process of mediated communication that views crime as a wound and justice as the healing of that wound. The two young men had just learned, supposedly, how to express what was beneath their anger and listen to each other to reach a resolution without resorting to violence. Now one of them was straddled on top of the other, trying to pummel him to death. All I could do was to keep repeating pathetically, “Remember your communication skills. Just talk to each other.”
Hearing the commotion, six officers rushed in and forced them apart, the men’s arms still flailing as they struggled to continue thumping each other. The next time my students were allowed back in class several weeks later, one of them had a broken arm. Rumor was that an officer had broken it in the elevator, the only place in the jail with no camera.
Just a few months later, another fight broke out in the classroom when two students, in quickfire, unified motion, sprang out of their seats and punched another student on the head. They hit him with such force that he toppled to the floor. He had been standing before me; if their position had been only a few inches to the right, he would have fallen on top of me and crushed me. Instead, he fell sideways where the men kept up a battery of kicking, clearly trying to kill him.
I was stuck at the front of the classroom, at the opposite end to the exit, and shouted, “Get someone! Get someone!”
Not one man in the room reacted but watched impassively as the two students, usually among the most positive and helpful in the class, continued to beat the man on the floor.
Finally I leapt over computer cords and ran through a maze of desks to the door. I threw it open and jumped into the classroom across the corridor, peopled by about fifteen students and their teacher.
“They’re trying to kill him!” I yelled, slamming the door behind me.
The room freeze-framed. Not one person reacted, even the teacher, somewhat of a friend of mine, their expressionless faces tilted upward in my direction.
A drumroll of footsteps pounded outside. I flung open the door and made a start to find help.
“Get back!” commanded an officer as all six of them barged into my classroom. Soon after that, I requested a transfer to working with students independently so I wouldn’t have to work again in the classroom.
Now, watching this boy on the street being attacked, the shadow of memory made me too scared of being hurt to intervene. But I couldn’t sleep that night. That boy could have had a concussion, and from the way he lopsidedly walked down the street, he might have been seriously injured.
About ten minutes after the youths had run off, a police car came racing down the street outside the café towards where they had disappeared. I wasn’t the one to have called them, instinctively wanting to protect black boys from what could be the start—or continuation—of a downward spiral of incarceration and post-incarceration.
But where was my humanity? Had my fear of being hurt frozen me to the point of apathy, just like my students, who knew the consequences of being a ‘snitch’, and those in the classroom across the hallway and the teacher who didn’t react to an attempted murder-in-progress? Had I (d)evolved to the point of not even trying to stop people from being harmed, even when it was happening right in front of me?
One of my students in jail would sometimes mock with a cheeky smile, “Why can’t we all get along?” He pulled up his shirt one day to show me where he’d been shot fifteen times. Nineteen years old, and his skinny chest was pockmarked with bullet holes.
As Eli Weisel said, “Violence happens when words fail.” I continue to try and use writing and communication skills to forge positive avenues for self-expression, but my heart is heavy at the amount of violence, seen and unseen, that permeates our world, sanctioned by ignorance and political manipulation, and my culpability in its continuance. Clearly, apathy and fear are not the answer.
Working with a young student in a café on a typically foggy day in San Francisco, I turned to face the street when her mother indicated that a fight was taking place. A group of young teenagers in the crosswalk, probably no more than 15 years old, were watching a boy stomp on the head of another boy lying in a fetal position on the pavement. It went on for a few minutes until a passing driver honked a horn, sending the group scattering down the hill.
A girl stood by with an uncertain look on her face, as if she didn’t know whether she should follow the group or stay with the boy. The boy slowly got to his feet and took a few steps, looking dazed, then, regaining himself, listed down the street in the opposite direction, the girl by his side. Not one onlooker tried to stop the fight, not pedestrians, café sitters, the girl, or me.
When I was 14, probably the same age as the girl, on an otherwise empty street in Glasgow at 6:30 am, I had tried to intervene when I happened upon two youths violently shoving each other. I stood by, waiting for a chance to make them stop.
Suddenly, sensing my presence, both youths swiveled in my direction with their fists up like they were about to start punching me. I fled as one of them snarled, “What are you looking at?”
When, more recently, at the end of my Restorative Justice class at the local jail as two students began throwing insults at each other that quickly escalated into vicious punches, I had also tried to intervene, first by attempting to stand between them and then by appealing to their higher selves. Restorative Justice is a process of mediated communication that views crime as a wound and justice as the healing of that wound. The two young men had just learned, supposedly, how to express what was beneath their anger and listen to each other to reach a resolution without resorting to violence. Now one of them was straddled on top of the other, trying to pummel him to death. All I could do was to keep repeating pathetically, “Remember your communication skills. Just talk to each other.”
Hearing the commotion, six officers rushed in and forced them apart, the men’s arms still flailing as they struggled to continue thumping each other. The next time my students were allowed back in class several weeks later, one of them had a broken arm. Rumor was that an officer had broken it in the elevator, the only place in the jail with no camera.
Just a few months later, another fight broke out in the classroom when two students, in quickfire, unified motion, sprang out of their seats and punched another student on the head. They hit him with such force that he toppled to the floor. He had been standing before me; if their position had been only a few inches to the right, he would have fallen on top of me and crushed me. Instead, he fell sideways where the men kept up a battery of kicking, clearly trying to kill him.
I was stuck at the front of the classroom, at the opposite end to the exit, and shouted, “Get someone! Get someone!”
Not one man in the room reacted but watched impassively as the two students, usually among the most positive and helpful in the class, continued to beat the man on the floor.
Finally I leapt over computer cords and ran through a maze of desks to the door. I threw it open and jumped into the classroom across the corridor, peopled by about fifteen students and their teacher.
“They’re trying to kill him!” I yelled, slamming the door behind me.
The room freeze-framed. Not one person reacted, even the teacher, somewhat of a friend of mine, their expressionless faces tilted upward in my direction.
A drumroll of footsteps pounded outside. I flung open the door and made a start to find help.
“Get back!” commanded an officer as all six of them barged into my classroom. Soon after that, I requested a transfer to working with students independently so I wouldn’t have to work again in the classroom.
Now, watching this boy on the street being attacked, the shadow of memory made me too scared of being hurt to intervene. But I couldn’t sleep that night. That boy could have had a concussion, and from the way he lopsidedly walked down the street, he might have been seriously injured.
About ten minutes after the youths had run off, a police car came racing down the street outside the café towards where they had disappeared. I wasn’t the one to have called them, instinctively wanting to protect black boys from what could be the start—or continuation—of a downward spiral of incarceration and post-incarceration.
But where was my humanity? Had my fear of being hurt frozen me to the point of apathy, just like my students, who knew the consequences of being a ‘snitch’, and those in the classroom across the hallway and the teacher who didn’t react to an attempted murder-in-progress? Had I (d)evolved to the point of not even trying to stop people from being harmed, even when it was happening right in front of me?
One of my students in jail would sometimes mock with a cheeky smile, “Why can’t we all get along?” He pulled up his shirt one day to show me where he’d been shot fifteen times. Nineteen years old, and his skinny chest was pockmarked with bullet holes.
As Eli Weisel said, “Violence happens when words fail.” I continue to try and use writing and communication skills to forge positive avenues for self-expression, but my heart is heavy at the amount of violence, seen and unseen, that permeates our world, sanctioned by ignorance and political manipulation, and my culpability in its continuance. Clearly, apathy and fear are not the answer.