Flashback: Responding to Injustice: What Would We Have Done?
What does it take to go in a different direction than the crowd? Under what circumstances would you? (Photo from Unsplash)
Note: The new film The Zone of Interest (released for streaming this month on Max) focuses on the every day life of a family in a house that is “everything we dreamed” — AND which happens to separated by a wall and razor wire from the Auschwitz concentration camp. In the film, we hear birds chirp, see children play, babies cry, adults argue — with a steady background hum from furnaces, distant screams of anguish, intermittent gunshots (all unseen). The family celebrates birthdays, hosts pool parties, struggles with work-life balance, and talks about almost everything other than the mass exterminations taking place next door. It also makes it impossible to ignore the question of how anyone could ignore such obvious evil, and what “we” would have done in the same situation, or if we were facing down other historic events. It’s a question I’ve spent a lot of time asking myself, and thought it might be time to revisit a piece I wrote last year. Let me know what you think.
One of the ongoing questions I ask myself when I am reading history is “what would I have done?” (WWIHD)
What would I have done if I was told to give up my religion or be executed? What would I have done as a white man if I had grown up in the slaveholding South? What would I have done if I was living in Germany when Hitler came to power?
The question took hold in my mind in college when I was reading the classic (and controversial) psychology study by Stanley Milgram in the 1960’s (summarized by Esquire with this headline: “If Hitler asked you to electrocute a stranger, would you?”), suggesting that in the right circumstances, most people would follow orders from a person in authority rather than stand up and fight back.
The question came up again last week when I heard an interview with Sam Freedman, the author of a new biography about the early years of former vice president and presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey. Freedman tells the story of how Humphrey faced that question when he was a grad student at LSU in the 1930’s. One of his professors had just escaped Nazi Germany, and confidently told the class that out of ten students, it was likely only two of them would have taken a stand against Hitler; the remainder would have gone along with the Nazi regime. At that moment, Freedman says, Humphrey resolved to be one of those who directly opposed injustice. He returned to his home of Minneapolis and spent his early political career taking bold stands to improve civil rights as mayor of Minneapolis and, later, as a US Senator and presidential candidate.
So I was already deep into the WWIHD question when I went to Charlotte this past weekend to see Aaron Sorkin’s new (2018) stage version of Harper Lee’s classic novel about the Jim Crow South, To Kill a Mockingbird.
In the novel, small town attorney Atticus Finch is seen through the eyes of his 8-year-old daughter as a moral crusader without flaw. The play looks at him through the eyes of his daughter, son and housekeeper, and asks what Atticus should have done to advance race relations in Maycomb, Alabama.
Atticus gives us one point of view: take it slow, and look for the good in everyone who surrounds you. You can find good even in the most entrenched racist, he says, if you can just “climb into his skin and walk around in it.” That goes for Mrs. Henry Dubose, who calls Atticus out for defending Tom Robinson, a man falsely accused of rape (Atticus lets his children know she is really a good person who is confused because she is trying to kick a morphine habit). It goes for Bob Ewell, a racist who extorts his daughter into accusing Tom of rape (he recently lost his job, Atticus says, so it makes sense he is looking for someone to blame). And it goes for Mayella Ewell, the accuser (she has been beaten by her father and left on her own to raise her six brothers and sisters). On issues of race, Atticus is an accommodationist: Maycomb will eventually come around on race, and surely will not let their fears and prejudices “extend to sending an innocent man to his death.” “Time’s are changing,” he assures Calpurnia, his Black family housekeeper.
Calpurnia confronts Atticus about his claim times are changing: “You sure about that?”
But the play questions all of that. “You sure about that?” says Calpurnia, in response to Atticus’ optimism that Maycomb is ready to change (in the end, she is proven right: with no evidence, Tom is convicted by an all-male, all-white jury). Jem, Atticus’ son, tells his dad he wants no part of climbing inside Bob Ewell’s skin. Even Sheriff Heck Tate concludes that Ewell has crossed a line that disqualifies him from deep empathy: “There’s just some kind of men you have to shoot before you can say hidy to ‘em,” he tells Atticus. “Even then, they ain’t worth the bullet it took to shoot ‘em.” “Oh no,” Calpurnia adds, “They’re worth the bullet.”
Sorkin dramatizes the question in an either-or form – are we the sort of people who respect everyone (Calpurnia calls Atticus out on this: is respect for everyone ok “no matter who you’re disrespecting by doing it?”), or are we willing to condemn those who go beyond the pale? In theological terms, do we “pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44) or “repay them…according to the evil of their deeds” (Psalms 28:4)?
I think we have more options than just those two when it comes to responding to people we see doing wrong:
1. Obviously the majority of us do nothing (as the Milgram experiment illustrated) – we follow “orders.” We don’t pray for or work against those we see doing wrong; instead we either become part of the problem or ignore and disengage and, until it effects us personally, we do nothing.
2. A second option is to see the wrong, roll our eyes about it, wish it was different, but do nothing.
3. We can oppose the wrong quietly, working behind the scenes to make things better.
4. We can publicly oppose, calling out wrong and working in the daylight for change.
Going back to the WWIHD question, would I have gone to the stake with my Huegenot ancestors defending my faith in 16th century France? Advocated for abolition in the 1840’s South? Stood up to Hitler in 1930’s Germany? I worry I wouldn’t have.
I hope I wouldn’t have fallen into Option 1; I pray I wouldn’t have stopped at Option 2. In my life so far, at my best, I have exercised Option 3, but have rarely been bold enough to jump in to Option 4.
If the world is ever going to change, we are going to need a lot of 3’s and 4’s.
-Leslie
What about you? How have you thought about your place in this world, and the work of making it better?
How can we take the best of Atticus’s empathy while not excusing obvious evil?
References:
The controversial Milgram experiment summarized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Esquire article on the Milgram experiment: https://classic.esquire.com/article/1970/2/1/if-hitler-asked-you-to-electrocute-a-stranger-would-you
New Hubert Humphrey biography, Into the Bright Sunshine: https://www.amazon.com/Into-Bright-Sunshine-Humphrey-AMERICAN/dp/0197535194
All To Kill a Mockingbird quotes from Aaron Sorkin’s stage play (2018)