I rarely watch network TV, but last night I was lucky enough to catch a fascinating episode of ABC’s Primetime entitled “What would you do?” ABC conducts experiments to see what people what people would do in certain situations: if they saw a child getting beaten up by other kids in a park, a couple fighting, etc. But I was particularly interested in the segment called “Taxi Cab Slurs”.

The premise is simple: put an actor in taxi cab as the driver and have him go off on a racist tirade to see how the passenger reacts, if at all. All of this is caught on hidden camera, of course.

They started out in New Jersey, where they picked up a business woman who is described as “Puerto Rican”. The driver starts going off on “Arabs” and the woman looks uncomfortable. Slowly she starts to counter his claims saying something like “I don’t agree because that would be prejudice and I am not anywhere close to being prejudiced.” Well, maybe not against middle eastern people, but what about Asians? When given the chance, this “woman of color” starts on Asians and can’t stop. Her prize-winning moment is when, in talking about the way Chinese people drive, she says “You know they can’t see right to left out of their eyes.” Classy.

The driver picks up a couple of Latinas in New Jersey as well. These girls look like teenagers. When the driver starts with his racist diatribe, the girls giggle to themselves and send text messages saying “Is he crazy?” and the like. Obviously they aren’t in agreement with what he’s saying about Asians and Jews, but what about when he asks them about their race?

“Are you two Mexican?”

“Why all Spanish people gotta be Mexican?”

Hmm…

Then they took the experiment down South, to Savannah, Georgia, where there was no shortage of racist people to pick up. Among them, a white woman who says that her hometown of Atlanta is being overrun by Latinos: “I mean it’s like Cuba. There are people that don’t even speak English!” After the tirade we learn that the women is on the “diversity commitee” at the company where she works.

Host John Quinones got a little riled up when he confronts a redneck who had been caught on tape saying “I like to do target practice on Mexicans and Puerto Ricans”. Quinones said “As a Hispanic, I was offended by that.” Whoa, John, don’t get crazy on me!

My favorite scene was when the “racist” driver picked up two very traditional-looking middle-aged Southern women in Savannah. The women were visiting from Atlanta for a real estate conference. As the driver began to go off on middle eastern people and the women immediately start glancing back and forth at each other and then begin to stand up to the driver. When asked about Mexicans in Atlanta, they something like “Atlanta is a very diverse city, there are people from all over the world there, and that’s why we love it.”

When the ladies get out of the car to talk to Quinones, they are asked why they stood up to this guy when so many others did not. One of the women says that she thinks that anyone should have the right to come to this country to make a life for themselves, no matter where they are from.

She grabs Quinones’ hand and says how proud she is that people like his parents had the opportunity to come to the United States, which in turn gave him the opportunity to do the job that he’s doing now. Quinones says “You’re going to make me cry,” and woman responds, “I want you to. I want to bring tears to your eyes. I want you to be moved by how great that is.” It was very spontaneous and moving, as cheesy as my description might sound.

You can check out a short clip from “What would you do?” on the ABC news web site.