Last last year, as many as 10 young men gang-raped a 15-year-old girl, while another 10 people watched, in Richmond, California. As horrible as the attack was, with many questions that swarm regarding one's ability to witness such a gruesome attack without intervening or calling for help, we already have a name for this phenomenon: the bystander effect. The term was coined to make sense of how 38 people witnessed, by hearing and/or seeing, the violent rape and murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964. And, subsequent research has found that the diffusion of responsibility, or the pressure one perceives to intervene, increases as the number of people present increases.
Unlike other countries, like some in Europe, many of the US's Good Samaritan laws are focused on protecting individuals who help in emergency situations from criminal and financial liability, yet, there is little about holding responsible those who fail to intervene in such situations. (Think back to the 1997...
I doubt, or at least hope that I should doubt, that anyone is unaware that the United States has a history of excluding women and people of color from important institutions that offer opportunities toward a better quality of life. To be more specific, we used to have explicit laws and policies that barred women and racial and ethnic minorities from the labor market, institutions of higher education, and the military, just to name a few. We can celebrate the social progress that has been made with respect to race, ethnicity, and gender (especially now during Black History Month and next month, Women's History Month) and really jump for joy when we start to see true equality. One victory has been an equal representation of women in institutions of higher education. But, now that women are starting to enroll and graduate in higher numbers than men, some people are starting to worry, like New York Times's