Should I Speak Out When I Overhear a Person Saying Something Hateful?
I was in a barbershop in a town west of the Mississippi and east of the Rockies. I didn’t hear what had been said before or what came after, but I suddenly heard another customer (quite calmly) say, “I just wish all homosexuals would be obliterated.” I’m gay and have had nightmares about being in a concentration camp because of my sexuality. Hearing those words said out loud froze my blood. I didn’t make a scene, just sat and pondered it all for a minute, then got up and walked out. I didn’t want to knowingly breathe the same air as someone speaking the language of Nazis. Should I have spoken out? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
Some years ago, I was in Budapest at one of those “ruin bars” that pop up there in odd corners, and one of my drinking companions — a person with intertwined literary and civil rights careers — suddenly stood up and made his way over to a table of young men. He had been a dissident under Hungary’s Communist regime, and was something of a dissident under its current Fidesz party government. Not knowing Hungarian, I can only characterize his tone: reproving, but not antagonistic. He explained, when he returned, that he’d overheard one of the young men using a slur for gay people, and that he made a habit of correcting his compatriots whenever he heard them speaking contemptuously about gays, or Jews, or Romani, or another such disfavored group, none of which he was personally a member of. These “teaching moments” happened quite a lot, and, though I don’t know that he was ever slugged in response, he would not have been discouraged if he were. That’s the sort of person he was.
As I look back, it’s clear I wouldn’t have found what he did so admirable if I thought he was doing merely the moral minimum — fulfilling what was required of him. I don’t think one is obliged to confront everyone who says reprehensible things. I do think it would be better if more of us did so. So you didn’t have a duty to call out the guy. But if you judged it was safe to do so, you might, as you were leaving, have simply pointed out that there are gay people — and people who care about someone who’s gay — everywhere you go, and that it was a bad idea to assume he wouldn’t be overheard by one of them. Even if he wanted to be overheard, there are tactical advantages to invoking social norms as a proxy for moral condemnation. Of course, it would have been good if a straight person had spoken up, too. Enforcing norms of basic decency helps challenge the atmosphere of homophobia; in this case, it might have undermined the speaker’s confidence that he had conversational permission to wish for the obliteration of millions of human beings. My Hungarian dissident, for all his charm and persistence, knew he wasn’t going to change the customs of his country by himself. Still, people like him make the world just a little bit kinder.
A Bonus Question
Once, I was involved with an organization whose elected president was being undermined by a small but loud faction. Eventually, emails identified the troublemakers and revealed that they were actively sabotaging the president. Those people were expelled. The problem is that the president obtained these emails unethically.