This article rubbed me the wrong way for a number
of reasons. In it, a commentator suggests that Bernie Sanders, the most
left-wing presidential candidate, is making a terrible mistake in saying that America’s focus should be on
inequality and poverty, not reparations for black communities. He says that
pragmatic concerns of impossibility are hypocritical from someone who wants to
fight inequality, and that fighting wealth/income inequality doesn’t address
the wage gap between blacks and whites, and that Sanders is ignoring white
supremacy.
It reminds me of another article I saw recently, which
discussed whether nerds/geeks have a legitimate claim to be oppressed. This
comes from a long line of articles along the same
lines, some of which are both hypocritical and offensive. Many, of course, are
more balanced and reasonable.
The world is a nasty place and lots
of people suffer. Not all suffering can be blamed on other people, and there
frequently is a different system in which any particular suffering might not
have arisen, and which someone could therefore use as evidence of systemic
suffering.
The two articles above are on
different subjects, but they’re clearly linked; they are arguments about the targets/sufferers
of oppression and how to fix the problem. In one case an author is claiming
that racism is a problem that goes far beyond poverty, and in the other case an
author is claiming that bullying is negligible compared to sexism (or racism).
As others have pointed out, ideally we would say something like ‘I understand
your pain and sympathize. I will support you and hope you can do the same for
me’. But government budgets are limited, political goodwill and time for
changes is limited, and humans, even feminists, tend to see things as
competitive hierarchies and tend to divide the world into tribal groups.
It is therefore both a naturally
human, and a legitimate political, question to ask whose suffering is worst,
and if there are any overlaps. Let me start with a brief summary of the
suffering of racial minorities (primarily black people), move on to women, take
a stroll through poverty and, finally look at bullying, by which point you’ll
already be anticipating my arguments. These aren’t comprehensive summaries, but
give a taste of the points people make. If you have read much about this, skip
this page.
Racial discrimination
Racial minorities have undergone
some extreme discrimination in the past. Africans were enslaved. They were
regarded as stupid animals, and never educated, prolonging the myth.
Non-European countries were conquered and ruled from abroad, with foreigners
extracting wealth from the oppressed population. In the US, housing was
segregated and controlled, blacks were denied opportunities for advancement and
black areas (created by segregated housing as well as demographic differences
between states) were underfunded. More recently, legal barriers to equality
have been removed, but black people nowadays have to work past poor education,
financial barriers (such as higher insurance costs), social barriers (such as
needing to support more needy families and not knowing anyone who can offer
support) and cultural barriers (such as deference being misinterpreted as being
shifty). Children play in the streets because they have nowhere else, but
police can harass youngsters on the streets, or else drug dealers can recruit
them from off the streets. Both options can lead to them getting shot. Black
people are still regarded as criminals or less accomplished, even when an
individual clearly is not, and these recognizable stereotypes permeate a lot of
their lives.
Sexist discrimination
Women have been the lesser sex for
as long as we have a historical record. They were property. Rape was a crime
against a father for reducing his daughter’s value, and was often settled by
forcing the rapist to pay the father an appropriate dowry and marry his victim.
In other places rape was the initiation of married life. Women were regarded as
stupid creatures and not educated, which perpetuated the myth. More recently,
women have achieved equal legal status. However, they still need to work
against systematic cultural biases. Women are treated differently from early
life onwards, raised to be more conciliatory, less aggressive, passive and to
subordinate their interests to others, be it a group or an individual. Women
are still regarded as inferior by some, and their bias finds justification by
criticising a woman whatever approach she takes; bossy if she acts like some
men, or too passively feminine if she doesn’t. Others subscribe to these
judgements because they are recognizable stereotypes and easier to consider
than to make a careful judgement of a person.
Women have higher requirements
placed on them, being expected to be HR managers, dealing with emotional
issues, even when their job is elsewhere, and judged on how attractive they
are, with comments switching from ‘ugly troll’ to ‘slut who charmed her way to
the job’, with some men and women unable to deal with women without letting
these judgements cloud their minds.
‘Class’ discrimination
Poor people have existed for as long
as there have been people. Every society in the world (perhaps barring some
small and effectively negligible ones) has had hierarchies and people who got
less than others. Poor children have always had a worse education, worse
support from their parents financially, educationally and in time. Their social
networks preclude them from finding good jobs that would lift them from
poverty, and their appearance and accent can get them stereotyped as criminal,
untrustworthy or incapable. Legal barriers to equality have been lifted
(everyone can vote, landowner or not) but all sorts of cultural and social
barriers remain. For example, poor people aren’t socialized to deal with high
society and instead they learn their place and not to be pushy. Poor people,
without family support and expectations of achievement often lack confidence
(just like women), and people judge this belief that one is worse as actually
being worse. Even outside of these judgements, a lack of confidence and social
ability can prevent poor people from taking or creating opportunities.
That summarises ‘mainstream’ forms
of oppression. I haven’t discussed other protected categories (age, religion,
sexuality are protected in addition to race and sex), but I don’t need to. My
summaries, or your own knowledge if you skipped them, should make it clear that
our theories of how oppression manifests itself are converging. Poor
educational opportunities, social exclusion and bias that judges people for
‘character’ traits that are either taught to them, not relevant, or a
stereotype, all create barriers that in any situation are not extreme, but make
much of life more difficult. Each of the groups discussed suffers from the same
mechanisms of disadvantage. Discrimination has been far worse in the past, but
legal equality now exists. That these groups, as groups, are so much worse off
shows how powerful these mechanisms of disadvantage are.
But that’s the whole point. Through
careful thought and study sociologists have found out how disadvantage is
perpetuated, and disadvantage causes further disadvantage in the same way. The
cycle of poverty is hugely powerful. Bernie Sanders is quite right to focus on
inequality and unequal opportunities. These are overriding concerns, because
inequality affects everyone. Yes, racism affects black people, but so does
poverty. Without poverty perpetuating itself, racism in the US probably still
would exist, but a vast amount of the inequality would resolve itself because
we know that blacks are suffering from the effects of poverty.
Why should we have reparations for
harms that weren’t committed against us? I happen not to have any black
ancestors that I know of, but I have both poor and female ancestors. Should I
be repaid because of that heritage? Am I no more than a member of an arbitrary
group, rather than an individual, free to define myself? If we read the article
I first mentioned, we’d be told that reparations are due to blacks because of
past crimes. What aspect of slavery has a modern black man suffered? None. He
has suffered from the cycle of poverty that was initiated by slavery.
Anti-poverty campaigning will resolve that disadvantage.
Of course, it does seem to be the
case that these different oppressed groups suffer from some of these mechanisms
of disadvantage more than others. Women, through the sharing of wealth in
marriage, experience no perpetuation of their poverty as a group. They now
share in the poverty (or not) of their parents, one male and one female. On the
other hand, they probably do suffer from social judgements more than poor
people.
Any campaign to address these social
disadvantages must necessarily help both women and the poor, just like any
campaign that truly addresses the root cause of disadvantage. But it might be
easier to ask for special privileges for a group, based on past suffering of
people who belonged to the same group in the past. This avoids the difficulty
of dealing with people as individuals, and the difficulty of addressing flaws
in fundamental aspects of human nature and our economic system. However, it is
based on the logical fallacy of collective responsibility, which is outlawed by
the Geneva Convention on Human Rights. In this case, though, it’s collective
suffering: ‘a black man suffered, I am black, therefore I share his suffering’.
If that argument holds, I can as easily take out the ‘black’. Or one could
replace ‘man’ with ‘human’. A human suffered, I am human, therefore I share
that suffering.
Similarly, white people conquered
and ruled foreign countries. But so did non-white people, and people of all
types conquered and ruled their own countries. It is undeniable that the
British committed some monstrous acts in India. It is undeniable that Indians
also did so, both before and during British rule. Not only this, but British
people were nasty to British people, and Indians nasty to other Indians; the
Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims had fought many times before the British, and the
Indian kingdoms had fought amongst themselves. At the bottom of the heap were
always the poor people. Poor people’s countries were conquered and ruled, with
aristocrats extracting wealth from the oppressed population.
Perhaps we do all deserve
compensation for the sufferings of our ancestors. If they hadn’t been murdered,
oppressed and maltreated then society might be far more advanced than it is
now. The number of geniuses whose insights were lost to disease, war, famine or
lack of education or opportunity must be enormous. Sadly we can’t recreate a
perfect society by paying ourselves what we’ve lost. We can never regain the
progress that might have been. There’s only so much wealth in the world, and
its distribution is a problem of equality and poverty. I agree that there are
aspects of racism that aren’t all about poverty, but the reason I was so riled
by that article is because I do think that the original causes of disadvantage
are subordinate to the perpetuation of it, and that solving all poverty would
solve most of our race problems, but that somehow addressing all of our race
problems without considering poverty is not possible and wouldn’t address all
the other poverty out there.
By any standard except the most
selfish that must count as an inferior outcome.
The next post will expand on this issue.
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