Step by step: Anti-Asian discrimination and bystander intervention

Abstract

Combating the recent surge of anti-Asian racism requires a collective effort that includes the willingness of nontarget bystanders to intervene, but little is known about the circumstances under which they are willing to do so. The present qualitative study explores why non-Asian bystanders decide to intervene when they witness anti-Asian racism, and why, under other circumstances, they choose not to. Twenty semi-structured interviews were conducted with non-Asian college students who witnessed anti-Asian discrimination. Guided by the five-stage sequential decision-making framework of bystander intervention, we analyzed intervention as a series of stages: seeing the event, recognizing it as worthy of intervention, determining one's responsibility for acting, deciding how to act, and, finally, executing on that plan. The respondents recounted a diverse range of situations and factors in each stage that impacted why they intervened or not. Our findings suggest that the act of intervening increases the bystander's confidence and desire to intervene again in the future. Given the complexity of the bystander decision chain and the compressed timeframe in which it often occurs, we conclude that training on bystander antiracist intervention might benefit from being structured according to the multi-stage model.