My Take | Latest racist attacks a reminder of New York’s infamous past
- Bystanders’ apathy – a phenomenon that was studied for a long time by psychologists following a notorious murder in 1960s New York – may be to blame for the failure of witnesses to intervene in two brutal racist attacks this week in the Big Apple
New York has, once again, cemented its long-standing reputation for apathy. On Monday, the city witnessed not one but two brutal unprovoked attacks against two Asians in a wave of ethnic hate crimes across the United States.
But what is perhaps even more disturbing is that there were bystanders in both cases and they did nothing. Given the level of ethnic violence against Asians that has been widely reported in recent months, it’s all the more puzzling why no one saw fit to intervene to help those two victims.
According to reports, a 65-year-old woman was kicked and stomped on by a man who shouted anti-Asian remarks outside a residential building. A delivery man and a building staff member saw the attack but did not intervene.
On the same day, an Asian man was punched and put under a chokehold until he fainted on a busy subway train. Again, no one tried to help, but someone did take the trouble to film the attack and put it on TikTok, which has since gone viral.
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Psychologists, in fact, have a term for the phenomenon, known as the Bystander Effect. Given the history of the notorious New York murder that gave rise to the psychological term, the irony is all the more bitter for the city this week.