Should have kept her mouth shut.
RE: She should have kept her mouth shut.
Since possibly the early 1980s there have been stories of persons of color brutalizing others because “he looked at me.”
It was said staring at another person of that type for more than a split second was antagonizing and asking for a fight!
An invitation egging them on.
I was in college delivering campus mail in Detroit literally during the July, 1967 Detroit riots. We were told we could work if we allowed a National Guardsman with his rifle aimed at a 45 degree angle on the mail truck running board. He told us “Watch out for snipers above you. I mean it. Keep watching.”
For some reason I thought it was an adventure. I wouldn’t do it today. But people are NOT improved or nicer than 1967.
I agree. While she didn’t deserve to be assaulted if she wanted to intervene positively she should have said some thing that was not both commanding and insulting at the same time to an already enraged man - you just become one more person pissing him off. When a man is riled up like that you have to be diplomatic or you have just inserted yourself into a tense situation situation as an adversary.
I would’ve said something like “Hey, I don’t know the backstory but I have been right where you are now myself and I have wished more than once that I had taken a quick pause to think of the best approach to the problem.” Even that might have elicited an assault.
That being said, the woman took that punch like a man and gave back a hard, unflinching stare right into his eyes.