Betrayed

I had the unfortunate experience of feeling a deep betrayal yesterday. It was horrible and gut wrenching. What surprises me the most is that it wasn't from my husband, my friends or anyone that I knew. It was complete strangers. How can you feel completely betrayed by absolute strangers? Not just strangers in the street, but strangers you will never come in contact with; ever.
I was watching The Today show, as I do every morning, and it was during one of their segments that the betrayal occurred. They had decided to do an experiment. They took a little girl around the age of 8 and set her on a busy street in the middle of New York City. They then had a man come and pretend to be snatching her. Now, both the girl and the man were aware of the situation, the test was to see if anyone was going to react. The child was good, she kicked and screamed and fought. She would yell over and over "Someone help me, this is not my dad!", fighting the whole time. Do you know that those people kept walking?! They would look back over their shoulders but nobody would do a thing, they didn't even call the police "just in case". They continued this experiment several times. I think it was on the 15th time that they got a reaction. What I found to be ironic was in whom the reaction came from. There were 3 young black men, my guess is their ages ranged from 17 - 19. They walked with confidence and would have fit into a stereotype that would have placed them as a bit rough. I have no doubt these three young men have been followed in stores in fear they would steal something and have probably experienced people walking across the road so they wouldn't have to pass close by them. When they passed by the little girl and the man they kept walking, never looked back but they were listening to what she was saying. They glanced back and forth at eachother several times but none spoke a word. They were approximately 20 - 30 feet from the situation when all of a sudden all three of them dropped what they had and their hands simultaneously, spun around and took off at a dead run toward the man. The moment they turned their demeanor immediately changed, their shoulders hunched and they were on the attack. None of them spoke to the other but they knew what they were doing. The young man who had walked in the middle ran at the "attacker" head on, the man to his right ran around and came at him from behind, the man on his left curved around and came at him from the side. They had surrounded him. The "attacker" immediately let go of the girl taking several quick paces backward and yelled they were on TV. The kids stopped running at him but never continued moving forward, just in case. I cant tell you how much pride I felt at that moment.
Throughout this segment I had been so appalled. They interviewed all of the people involved that had just walked by and the answer was always the same, nobody wanted to get involved. My heart was ripped out of my chest. I can handle making a fool out of myself, I have no problems with that. But I could never face myself in the mirror again knowing a little girl had been snatched and I saw it but didn't do anything out of fear that I was wrong in my assumption. All I could think of was a quote I remember hearing, I think it was George Carlin who said it, "I have been so betrayed by the human race." When the three young men were interviewed they responded by saying they weren't sure what was happening but by what that little girl was saying they weren't going to let it continue. The man who was playing her attacker compared their reaction to a feeling of being surrounded by a pack of wolves. He said it was obvious they fully intended on getting ahold of him. One of the boys just smiled and said "Yeah".
I will never meet those three brave young men. I will never throw my arms around their necks and tell them that they restored my faith in the human race. But they did. I hope someone of importance saw that segment. I hope someone sees that and takes a good hard look at the judgment those boys would have received based on their appearance. I hope things change.