Don’t just stand there
Like most city dwellers, Robin Parker is used to uncomfortable public moments. “Riding back and forth on the T, I see a lot of things,” she said. But one recent evening, her attention was drawn to a group of teenage boys in prep-school khakis and their loud, crude insults about women and African Americans. Unsure whether to speak up, she finally targeted the most vulnerable-looking boy. “You’re too handsome to be talking like this on the train,” she told him. “They dropped their heads, stopped the conversation, and apologized,” said Parker, manager of Harvard’s Events and Information Center. Before she got off the train, a white man approached and thanked her, a black woman, for saying what he couldn’t. As Parker relayed her story in the Barker Center, a hush fell over the crowd. It was the end of a Dec. 7 workshop on bystander awareness, and many participants had confessed how helpless...