Why don’t we speak out more?

We need to find courage in these trying times....

I’m upset with myself. As I left for work this morning, 20 month old daughter strapped to my chest and an overladen rucksack with my life’s work on my back, I came across a middle aged man with his dog out for a walk. As I rushed past, anxious as I was to catch my bus to get Gwen to nursery on time, I could see this man casually watching his pet deliver a grotesquery of gargantuan proportions right there on the street.

As I ran by, a number of thoughts flashed through my mind:

First “that is massive — what does he feed it?”

Second “he’s not going to pick that up”

Third “my daughter could be playing in the street one day and pick that up”.

Fourth “I’ve got to get to work”

Now I suppose I should have taken some comfort from the fact that he had at least the courtesy to guide his dog onto the road, rather than leave it smouldering in the morning’s chill on the pavement for all to see but that is, perhaps in part, the problem.

You see I’m angry with the man for such wanton disregard and lack of consideration for the community in which he lives. Of course i am. But I’m more angry with myself and the three other gents who walked by, guilty as we surely all are of the tacit acceptance of such behaviour that our silent acquiescence provides.

It seems to me that we are too quick to find excuses for our inaction. No doubt the excuse we all shared was that we were late for work and could ill afford an argument early in the morning. No doubt I had the additional concern of carrying a baby on my chest — if it turned ugly with this chap and his bulldog, what could I do?

But a larger part of me knows that they’re just that — excuses. And they excuse the fact that neither one of us seemingly had the moral courage or conviction to call him out.

And we need that moral courage in these trying times. I was heartened to read a story in the metro of Asma Shuweikh, a Muslim woman who intervened to stop an anti Semitic bigot from racially abusing a Jewish father and his two sons on the underground. The fact that she is Muslim made it more of a “story”, in this context, and I’m unsure if she should be celebrated all the more for it as doing so inadvertently suggests that Muslims are naturally antisemitic. They are not, neither would those who remained silent on that train carriage, witnessing the abuse unfold as they did, identify as antisemitic.

But if we remain silent in the face of such blind hatred, what are we? Our silence makes us complicit and worse it empowers these individuals to continue to abuse without threat of sanction. Perpetrators of this kind of behaviour should be ashamed but they can only become so if they are proactively shamed by the silent majority who surely do not share their views. Heroes like Asma prove that we can and should do better.

I still hope that we all share common values of decency, respect and consideration. No parent brings up their child to think pooing on the floor is acceptable behaviour. And if I returned that mans dollop of do-do to his own front door, I’ve no doubt he would be irked.

But he has grown complacent as we all have in living the values that I hope we all still share. And that complacency is fed by the apathy or the fear of doing the right thing. It’s time we all started speaking up a little more. Or at least finding the courage to do so. Including me.