This is the video that ABC News posted on Youtube about 4 years ago to test if people would intervene while interracial couple arguing in public. The director designed the experiment groups into two different kinds. The one with the White abusive man while the victim is African American, the other one is contrary. And both of the situations were happened as the man abusing the woman.
Turns out there were more women intervene in the "White-African American" arguing than they did to the other one. And we can see from the video that even there are some women intervene between the second couple, they were just asking if the woman need help, instead of yelling at the man and going forward to stop him. Even some men choose to pass by the second couple, which is the "African American-White" group. However, when the abusing gets physical, some bystanders started giving strong responds on what they saw.
The phenomenon above interested me a lot, and it made me want to ask what if you were in the video, passed by these kind of couples, would you intervene or which one group would you intervene? And what would you say to them?
Take a look at the interview of those bystanders and the researchers, there is an obvious truth that if the abusing man is African American, then to those people who are trying to intervene, there exist more recessive threats. That might be an important reason that most interracial domestic violence happened between the couple which are in the same situation of the second experiment group.
To intervene, at the very first, people need a lot of courage. In my point of view, mostly, people who overcome their fear and intervene those couple are motivated by their "strong power", like having a dog accompanied or much taller than the abusing man. And the video also shows the audience a good part that nowadays more and more people are able to broke the racial stereotypes and getting into a positive color-blind situation.
This is just a small test of would bystanders intervene interracial couples' argument, that might relate to how people see the phenomenon of interracial couples and maybe the domestic violence.
Great post Wei! I agree with you that it is probably easier to act on the situation if you are taller than the perpetrator or maybe have a large dog by your side. I also think that that shows how brave those women were to stand up for the woman being abused. I found it interesting that less women intervened when the abuser was black. He was being more physically abusive, which might have been more intimidating, but other than that there wasn't much difference between the white abuser and the black abuser. I found that very interesting. Thanks for the post :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment Sam!
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