Someone Else's Problem: When it's Really, Legitimately, Not Your Turn To Help

Last night in downtown Los Angeles, a stranger tried to help me.

I was pacing anxious figure-eights around the two posts of my bus stop as night fell. I was getting chilled in my knee-length dress, getting annoyed that I'd been delayed in getting back to my arguably-less-safe-but-definitely-less-chaotic suburb of Pomona, California. And someone noticed. Someone looked at me, and, showing all the sincerity of a father, asked me, “Are you all right?”

I wish I could say I appreciated him asking, because I truly believe that he meant well. But I couldn't appreciate it. I couldn't appreciate it because it wasn't appropriate; it didn't work; it was completely out of place. Because this person was literally a large, bearded, middle aged stranger in a white van. My annoyance wasn't an emergency; I didn't need an unlikely hero; there was absolutely nothing he could have done to make me feel or be more safe and well.

Social location means where you're at in the map of society. It involves your identity, your power, your insider/outsider status, the prejudices people apply to you, and the advantages and disadvantages passed on from your family. In our encounter, my would-be knight's social location involved the power advantage of being in a car, his maleness in a culture influenced by both shining-armor myths and rape mentality, and his lack of any previous relationship to me. He probably didn't do that math.

When we lose track of our social location, a lot of weird, creepy, counterproductive things happen. Tourism becomes re-colonization. NAACP chapters end up with mostly-white leadership. People can't interpret or learn from rejection because they don't know why their good intentions aren't enough.

Good intentions aren't enough. Being part of the world we want and need involves deeply, thoughtfully, intentionally good intentions, intentions that keep their eyes open and self-reflect, intentions that leave you room to imagine what it's really like to receive the 'help' that you want to give. And if your intentions to be helpful won't result in actual, healthy help, well... you need to control yourself.

Deeply, thoughfully, intentionally good intentions would have compelled the man to imagine what it's like to be honked, pointed, and spoken at by a stranger while waiting alone at a bus stop. Deeply good intentions might have called me to imagine how my international 'missions' might have jilted my Ecuadorian friends out of opportunities for in-community care, how they might have reinforced weird myths about White Americans. Deeply, thoughtfully good intentions might have led me to bring a few less coddly, indulgent care packages to my friend in his rehab program, when what he really needed was space. They might have resulted in stepping back from a thousand different wrong-times-to-help.

This doesn't mean ignoring. It's sometimes totally appropriate to point a distressed person to resources, to ask a friend in a more accessible social location to get involved, or to keep the situation in your peripherals to see if it escalates. It doesn't mean you don't care. In fact, it means that you do.

So, random van guy in LA, I must say I appreciate you thinking of me. Just... try to think a little more clearly next time.