Catching trains.
Picture the scene...
Evening rush hour near a major railway station. Each day a mass of people walk determinedly to catch the train home, while I try to go the other way. Those in the minority - wanting to walk away from the station - are jostled, forced onto the busy road or into the bordering wall, and often make slow progress against the tide.
This got me thinking...
This clearly isn't a issue of life and death, merely inconvenience. At the worst I might be forced to take a longer route home. But it set me thinking of comparisons with more general issues of devaluation, discrimination and disempowerment. I sometimes come across people who say, "We understand that the problem that you describe exists, but its not my fault - I'm just a cog in the machine."
So back to the situation I've described. Is it reasonable for the majority, walking one way, to treat me (one of the minority) in the way that they do? Clearly not. It isn't reasonable for me to be forced into a busy road, jostled, and pushed against a wall.
So who is at fault? Perhaps each individual who pushes me is to blame? But they have a right to walk the direction they do, they can't see me coming because of the people in front, they can't move out of the way because of the people at the side, and they are also inconvenienced to some extent by the crowd.
Perhaps the station designers, those who designed the pavement, or the road planners are to blame? But each of these people was doing a job, determined by those who hired them, and which wouldn't have included the control of how people walk on pavements - even if they'd had the time to consider such a comparatively small matter.
Maybe its all the fault of the Government? No. It doesn't seem reasonable to blame them just because we can't think of anyone else - and anyway what could they do?
Perhaps the real truth is that we must recognise that a group of people behave in a way that is - if you like - more than the sum of the individual members. To put that another way, the group of people walking for the train is at fault. No individual member of that group shares any more than a tiny responsibility, and you might even argue that the individuals are not to blame in any way.
But hold on, I can see where this is going and it can't be right...
If this is comparable with how members of other minority groups are treated by the majority (while of much less consequence of course) does this mean that members of the majority group are blameless? That's not a comfortable conclusion - or one that we would instinctively agree with. What are we missing? Maybe there's another factor to consider?
Does it help to remember that most individual pedestrians will know that the behaviour of the group is inconveniencing people? As most repeat this walk on a daily basis they will all have jostled people, or at least have observed people walking in the road. If they haven't considered the situation in any more detail then doesn't this in itself put them at fault? And if they have considered the situation but are too shy to take action that surely doesn't excuse them completely (while we may have some sympathy for their shyness).
Perhaps we must just accept that this is how majorities behave?
But there's surely yet another way to look at this. Groups of people are actually
easier to influence
than we might at
first think. If I felt strongly enough to do something about the pedestrians
- as
an ordinary citizen - I could probably make a difference. For instance I could:
-
put on a fluorescent waistcoat, stand at one end of the pavement and politely
request that people leave a gap at one edge;
- write a simple notice to the same effect and paint a white line on the
pavement;
- campaign to the council that they should do something similar;
- firmly wheel a small cart up the pavement edge so that people could follow
me.
What makes me think that this would make a difference? Well, there are examples of groups who have been persuaded successfully to establish a practice that makes real allowances for a minority, even at some inconvenience to themselves. The most obvious example - given the rest of this discussion - is the practice of people standing on the left on escalators for the London tube trains in order to allow a minority to pass by. This is such a well established practice that those who fail to comply with the system can find themselves reprimanded.
Many examples of majority groups discriminating against a minority will be more difficult to challenge, but the issues involved - the privileges to the majority and the disadvantages to the minority - are also more significant. If we argue that individual members of a majority can have some relatively significant effect through comparatively simple action, then we are drawn to change our earlier conclusion. Members of a majority can no longer be seen as blameless if they are (or should be) aware of the situation and if they fail to take at least some action.
At least that's where I got to in my musings by the time I reached home...