Yesterday I wrote about how it's difficult to know if, when and how to respond to situations where someone says something inappropriate in public. I raised two cases from the past week in which I was an eye and ear witness to shocking verbal encounters, one of them involving a profane mother (whom I didn't respond to or report to any authority) and one involving - or so I thought - a profane and racist bus driver (whom I did report to the Toronto Transit Commission). I talked about how I had some misgivings about both my passive and active responses in these two situations.
Well, it turns out that whatever small feeling of nobility I had about reporting the case of the racist bus driver was short-lived. My girlfriend, who was with me on the bus, later explained that it was a passenger, not the driver, who made the nasty comments to an elderly Asian lady sitting across from him. Just now I called the TTC back and explained the error, but still, having mistakenly blown the whistle on the innocent driver, I now feel at least as sick as I did yesterday while the incident was actually happening. I can only hope he hasn't already been contacted about it.
So is it better to hear and see no evil, allowing hateful comments in public spaces to go unchallenged? After this whole affair, I know it's going to be more difficult for me personally to stand up, for fear that I'm somehow mistaken. But I hope that's not the case.
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