by Lael Ewy
At first, it would seem odd that a
nation bent on social climbing, personal betterment, and the
acquisition of wealth would also be so enamored of victimization.
On further reflection, though, it makes
sense: if we gear everything for competition, we have to have
something to do with all the losers. And, more important, the losers
have to have some type of identity other than “loser,” which is,
in the United States, a much worse label than “died trying,” or
even “cheated his way to the top.”
In some cases, the victim identity can
be a way of bringing attention to real social inequities: those
exposing racism, sexism, and rape culture have all successfully
“played the victim card” in order to help the rest of us see the
real problem for what it is. For some people who are victimized by
their social conditions, publicizing victimization brings unexpected
social power, such as in the case of Emmett Till, a 14-year old
lynched in 1955. Till's mother insisted that his body be publicly
displayed in order to show the brutality of the crime perpetrated
against him, helping to further the cause of the Civil Rights
movement of the time.
Inevitably, this necessary
demonstration of social evil creates backlash among those on the
wrong side of history via claims that it's not as bad as the victims
say (“They were happier when they were slaves.”), that those
pressing their social cause are undeserving (“They're faking,” or
“They're gaming the system.”), that they had it coming anyway
(“If you dress like that, you're asking for it.”), or that they
are, themselves, the victimizers (“Feminazis.”).
The advantages of victimhood are, while
powerful, by nature also limited: once the victim identity has been
publicly acknowledged and attention to the cause secured, incremental
court decisions or legislative changes are made, and then those in
power, satisfied that they have “fixed it” go on doing their
thing, which is staying in power. This, then, marks the end of the
social power of victimhood and where the limitations of the
individual power of victimhood become apparent. The victim, by using
that term in order to gain power, finds that she only has
power within that frame and can never again step beyond it and back
into full, human identity. The disabled person may be able to press
her case for a reasonable accommodation using the Americans with
Disabilities Act, for example, but that does not guarantee access to
executive positions, marriage partners, or academic appointments,
Both despite and because of the advent
of things like Affirmative Action and the ADA, the power structure
goes out of its way to increase the barriers to moving forward and
moving up. “We've given you what you want,” the powerful seem to
say, “now shut up and go away.” Understanding this attitude is
key to understanding the sources of institutional discrimination and
how oppression becomes structural. By setting up structural barriers,
those in power protect themselves and those like them. As
demographics shift, you'll see (and probably have already seen) the
traditional, white, male power structure become ever stronger, the
reins of power ever more difficult to take in hand for those who
haven't proven their loyalty to the status quo.
Reverse victimization plays into the
ways the powerful stay in power. Donald Trump insist that those whom
he insulted apologize to him; white students claim “reverse
discrimination” when they don't get into the college they want to
get into; whole political movements rise to power on the idea that we
need to “take America back” from the teeming mob who stole it
from them. Those who play this game often fail to realize its
limitations, that they, too, will be duped by the truly powerful
people who help them promote their sense of victimization. The poor
and middle class white people riding Trumpist and Tea Party politics
will, if history is any indication, be no better off or even lose
ground under the leadership they promote. This is just fine with
those who stand to gain from such sentiments among the hoi polloi:
after all, the Tea Party backers won't be “losers”; they'll be
the perpetual victims of black people, brown people, and inner-city
“welfare cheats,” perpetually able to be called upon to add
“populist” credibility to what are essentially authoritarian
political figures.
The culture of right-wing victimization
has not yet, like the left, begun to move past the language of
victimization and into the language of survivorship. Survivors of
sexual assault, for example, have begun to harness this new power in
order to be seen as credible brokers in dismantling rape culture on
college campuses and in communicating a deeper understanding of how
to end rape culture on the whole. The #blacklivesmatter movement has
received criticism for its directness and for not being the
squeaky-clean thing that white folks want it to be. That arises from
#blacklivesmatter being made up of people who refuse to play the
victim in the first place: the movement gets criticized because it's
no longer possible to ignore. The white power structure had become
comfortable with the image of the black victim—of poverty, racism,
and overall downtroddenness. As long as there were black victims,
whites could take comfort in a kind of well-meaning but entirely
patronizing sympathy, to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. as a fallen
national hero, to declare a black history month, and to mention
Kwanzaa in defense of a “happy holidays” greeting. This is the
same mentality that promotes the idea of the “Magical Negro”
(noted by Spike Lee in regards to such characters as Bagger Vance)
and safe sidekicks such as Danny Glover's character in the Lethal
Weapon franchise. This safe view is distinctly challenged by the
idea that black people are also allowed to be, you know, people.
In the mental health field, the
antipsychiatry movement of the '60s and '70s transformed into the
“consumer” movement of the '80s and '90s and into an “illness”
movement of the '90s and '00s. The idea was that by identifying
as “the mentally ill,” as victims of a blameless disease,
suffering people would gain access to treatment, decent housing, and
disability benefits. The “it's better than being on the streets”
mentality has grown to embrace an acceptance of psychiatric
incarceration, anathema to early activists.
The real danger looming in all this is
that if people move beyond victimization and into survivorship, they
might become assimilated into a culture that they don't recognize,
and that people may lose their identity in the process. Can a black
American be both an American and black when one of the defining
features of American culture is structural racism? This is the field
upon which Barack Obama has played out his political career, and the
deep contradictions it creates can be seen in the deep contradictions
of his administration: successfully bailing out some of the least
deserving parts of the power structure, such as Wall Street and
General Motors, while simultaneously challenging that power structure
in the realm of gay rights. President Obama ground his entire
political machine into dust in order to pass the Affordable Care Act,
an immensely compromised attempt to expand access to health care that
also carefully maintained the least deserving part of it: the profits
of private insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies.
A fuller understanding of how power
works in the US is in order, one that goes beyond the simple
mechanisms of victim and perpetrator, loser and winner. Kimberlé Crenshaw's ideas about intersectionality move toward this, and
may prove vital in understanding how power works in a nation in which
there is no official, hereditary class structure. We are far from the
point at which we can make such ideas meme-worthy, though, and you'd
be hard-pressed to hear them discussed in a seven-minute spot on NPR,
much less a two-and-a-half minute piece on the CBS
Evening News.
Our next step, then, is not to create
another reactionary political uprising, but to foment a genuine
social movement that can articulate a vision of a future of both
genuine equality and robust cultural diversity.
