There are not many good reasons why someone should go to bed at 7:30 in the morning. The only reasons I can think of are reasons from Sci-fi movies (aliens invade, alien zombies, alien insomnia). Yet the reason I stayed up this late was just as valid. It was for a good old fashion intellectual discussion (I had to spell-check intellectual by the way).
Now I don't think of myself as a thinker. I generally stay in the beautiful, blissful house of ignorance. Yet today I must of had cabin fever because I opened the door to thought and left the igno-house without even packing a bag.
Believe me when I say that I should have packed a bag.
All of this started when I was on my weekly nerd store trip. While I was there I was with a group of fellow nerds who were just talking amongst themselves about local happenings. However, one of the nerds, a man who I generally think to be a nice guy, started saying some things that I considered to be subtly racist. Eventually the things this fellow started saying started to make me feel really uncomfortable, if not perturbed. Finally he capped it all off by telling the following story:
He and some of his friends were driving around one day when a Puerto Rican man (how they knew he was Puerto-Rican beats me) was jay walking in front of them. Now he started to walk really slowly giving the car the finger and the driver started to honk, some words got exchanged and tempered hit the breaking point. The driver of the car drove up next to the man jaywalking and the person in the passenger seat grabbed the Puerto Rican man in a headlock. The driver than drove off onto the highway dragging the Puerto Rican man along the side of the car. Eventually they let him go, but I am assuming, not until he was sufficiently bloodied.
Needless to say I was shocked when I heard the story. I was shocked and disgusted when I heard this story. Although the nerd who told it said he was only in the car and had nothing to do with it, I felt strongly repelled from him.
When I got back home later that night I told Bob what had happened. I always considered him to be more passionate about morals than me. So I wasn't surprised that when I told him the story he was even more disgusted than I was. Yet he also seemed upset that I didn't do anything. To be honest my reaction to the story when I was at the nerd store was less than ideal: I didn't want to rock the boat and I wanted to be friends with some of the people there, so when I heard the story I withdrew from the conversation for a while until it turned to a lighter more appropriate subject. However, Bob told me that he would have stepped in, and called the man out on the story. Challenging his beliefs and hopefully ensuring that everyone there was of the mindset that it was a horrible thing to do that to someone.
I didn't disagree with him that it was a horrible thing to do that to someone considering our generally accepted moral system. Yet, as always I had to play the devils advocate and say that I thought if I called the nerd out on the story might only cause him to become defensive and entrench himself more deeply into his beliefs.
Now I don't know if the nerd thought what happened in that car was acceptable or not, but as Bob said "by not doing anything about it you are silently agreeing with it". Maybe I shouldn't have used quotes but that the basic idea of what I think Bob said. Hopefully he will read this and explain what he said to me more clearly, maybe he will say something in the comments below, or even post on his own blog.
I wish I could go back in time and have the guts to say something to him when he told the story. I don't believe in a inherent good or a bad, but I do believe you shouldn't drag people along the highway because they jay walked in front of your car or are Puerto Rican. I don't even think I would have changed anything if I went back and said something, I might have had some people get pissed at me and become defensive. I just want to go back and say something so that I feel like I did the morally right thing.
I am curious what you guys think though. What should I have said? Should I have said anything at all? I'm going to assume that everyone who reads this blog thinks that dragging someone on the highway in a form of racist frontier justice is a bad idea. So tell me whats up. What do you feel I should have done? What do you think I should have done?
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