Power and Victimhood

I have been thinking about this for a while and I thought I might try to put my thoughts down in one place. Mainly, this is so I can try to get my own thinking straight, but I also thought I might share it because I doubt I'm the only one thinking about this. It is also complicated enough that people might be "feeling it" more than "thinking it", so it may be useful for some to have words to put to those feelings.  

So let's look at a couple cases. I'll start with a news article from Democracy Now (a very left leaning news agency)-

White Professor Admits to Pretending to Be Afro-Latina for Years

"In academic news, a George Washington University professor [Jessica Krug] specializing in Africa and the African diaspora has admitted she has lied about being Afro-Latina for years, when in fact she is a white Jewish woman from the suburbs of Kansas City."  

And we see this again here (This time from Wikipedia):

"Rachel Anne Dolezal (born November 12, 1977), also known as Nkechi Amare Diallo, is an American former college professor and activist known for being a white woman who identified and passed as a black woman. She is also a former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter president."

Two professors, both pretending to be African-American. Two white women claiming status as victims of an oppressive society. 

There are some interesting questions that come out of this regarding how self-identification works. What identities can one claim for oneself? But, putting that question aside, what I'm really interested in is this. 

It is a sad reality that just a generation or two ago, people were inclined to hide their non-white identity if they could. Especially in North America, if someone had an African or Indigenous background, but could pass as being white, they often would. This was very practical when facing racism that might get in the way of getting certain jobs, or social mistreatment. 

One of the wonders of our modern age is that people are now able to rediscover their heritage through DNA analysis, which has become readily available and relatively inexpensive. People who thought they were of wholly European descent are now learning about family secrets- hidden African or Indigenous ancestry.  

Now, racism is abhorrent. In a culture that was supposed to be rooted in Christian values, it is shameful that people were ever made to feel lesser on the basis of the colour of their skin, rather than the "content of their character". As St. Paul taught the Galatians, in Christ there is neither Jew, nor Gentile (Gal 3:28, and there are many other Scriptural quotations that can support this). This was a terrible failure on the part of Christians.  

Today, if someone has a mixed northern European/ Indigenous ancestry, they are more likely to want to claim their Indigenous heritage, even over their European heritage. I think it is beautiful and good that people no longer feel the need to hide who they are (and I hope this is a widespread feeling). No one should have to hide who they are. 

This is an interesting change in our culture.  I am interested in the draw towards "victimhood". As we see with the professors above, something has changed in our culture so that some white people are drawn to even lie about their heritage so they can claim the status of victimhood. 

Now, to be gracious, I would hope that the temptation would be to be in solidarity with a group of people who have been mistreated. But why would someone have to claim to be a member of the group to be in solidarity with them?  

What I suspect is that there is a draw to moral authority that can be claimed by identifying with groups that have been victimized in the past. That moral authority might also be called power. 

In certain circles (especially among those claiming to be "woke") it is almost as if there is a point system based on victimhood. If you claim membership in a group that has been mistreated ( in terms of ethnicity, sexuality, gender, disability, etc.), then your voice carries a level of power.  

This had good motivation behind it. These groups usually had little power attached to their voice. They didn't get heard in places of power or influence. For example, until relatively recently, women's voices and Indigenous voices were not heard as they should have been. So, the voices of those who have been victimized by society have been (rightly) given value to try to correct the deafness of the past. They were given value that was denied them in the past. 

A consequence of this is that some are drawn to this power. 

For example, I know a woman who said she wished she had a "gay friend". At that time she didn't know a gay person. It wasn't the content of the person's character that she wanted for friendship. It was a draw to a victim-identity, which in our society comes with moral authority. Why would they be drawn to say this? Could it be that in certain circles, points are given for such a social connection? Perhaps she wanted the social power. As the kids say, it has become "cool". 

Some will even lie to claim this power- to have the right to stand in a place of moral superiority and look down on others (especially perceived oppressors). One of the professors mentioned above, Jessica Krug, was quoted saying, 

"I also want to call out all these white New Yorkers who waited for hours with us to be able to speak and that did not yield their time to Black and Brown indigenous New Yorkers."

She is standing in a place of moral superiority (a place of power), casting judgement.  I suspect we are seeing a manifestation of Nietzsche's famous Will to Power, which claims that the primary motivation of human beings is power over others. 

The interesting thing all this exposes is that a victim-identity comes with power in certain influential circles, especially among those who are "woke".  

There are still real obstacles facing certain groups of people, and it is important that we pay attention to try to deal with these obstacles. What I am wanting to highlight is that some are claiming power that doesn't belong to them. Public space has been made to hear voices that need to be heard, and it seems like practices like virtue-signaling may be grabbing at that power. 

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This is a social reality, but it is also a psychological reality. The line separating the two realities is blurred in terms like "microaggression", "virtue signaling", and by the ease with which people seem to be seeking ways to be personally offended. 

There are people who are drawn to the power of victimhood in their own personal lives. To claim victimhood (real or imagined) is to claim a position of moral superiority over others. To be a victim is to claim a right to have your voice heard. To be a victim is to claim a right to justice. 

This is very important for someone who has been genuinely wronged. For example, sexual abuse victims often feel guilt  associated with the wrong that was done to them. To let go of this guilt they need to learn to be a victim. Something has been done to them, and it was wrong. Usually this is a stage that they learn to move past as they reclaim their future and identity. 

But, there are those who claim victimhood, or exaggerate their victimhood, for similar reasons that I suspect our professors above claimed an identity that wasn't theirs. The draw to victimhood in this case can be a release from personal responsibility. If you are a victim, then you are not a sinner. You have a right to anger and moral outrage. You may even have the right to be cruel to the person who has offended you. You stand in a place of moral superiority. You have a right to the sympathy and comfort of the other. There is a certain power to be enjoyed in this kind of victimhood. 

The downside is that you are stuck. You become enslaved. To be a victim of this kind promises power, but it traps you. I suspect the only way out is to let go of the power of victimhood, which will probably be like giving up an addiction. 

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These are just thoughts. Again, to be clear, I am not saying anything about actual victims (of personal or social evils). Rather, I am speaking about those attracted to the power that is compassionately reserved for true victims in our culture.          

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Below are a couple interesting articles around this topic and some quotes from those same articles that might help you decide if you want to read them. 

This article (from The Atlantic) deals with "microaggressions" defined as 

"a form of social control in which the aggrieved collect and publicize accounts of intercollective offenses, making the case that relatively minor slights are part of a larger pattern of injustice and that those who suffer them are socially marginalized and deserving of sympathy..."

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-victimhood-culture/404794/

In this article the author sees a new puritanism, where there is an agreed upon moral code mixed with anxiety regarding one's salvation status. The cancelling of the sinner reinforces the elect/salvation status of the one who casts judgement-

"Weber’s analysis of the development of Puritanism helps us to understand the social and psychological economy of the chosen few of our own society. Although the secularized American elite—successful, politically progressive men and women with degrees from highly selective universities and colleges who occupy or aspire to positions of leadership in government, business, education, journalism, publishing, entertainment, philanthropic foundations, and the like—no longer believe in the doctrine of God, they take their bearings by the decayed residue of biblical categories. It is not God they fear and profess to love, but man. Having learned at school to commit themselves to transformative moral action—the contemporary version of the Calvinists’ 'rational formation of the social cosmos'—they heed not the internal imperatives of prophetic conscience, but the external ones of social consciousness. They confess and repent not inwardly, but vocally and publicly. For it is the public, or a certain part of it—an entity often as inscrutable and arbitrary as the almighty God who, in Luther’s words, 'works life, and death, and all in all'—whose judgment they dread, and whose mercy they hope for." ... "Like Weber’s Puritans, believers in the Church of Humanity seek to authenticate their claims to salvation within a social framework. This is the inner meaning of virtue signaling, an activity that is meant to elicit public approval from like-minded people and thus confirmation, if not of one’s virtue, then at least of one’s conspicuous virtuosity." ... "I recently found in a photocopier at my university a chart entitled “Intersecting Axes of Privilege, Domination, and Opression [sic].” According to this chart, oppressors include those who are “male and masculine,” “female and feminine,” “male,” “white,” “European,” “heterosexual,” “able-bodied,” “credentialed,” “young,” ”attractive,” “upper and upper-middle class,” “anglophones,” “light, pale,” “gentile, non-Jew,” and “fertile.” If you are infertile, Jewish, dark-skinned, poor, ugly, old, unschooled, disabled, LGBTQ, non-European, neither masculine nor feminine, gender-deviant, and don’t speak English, you are among the happy few who stand on the very top rung of the ladder of victimhood—at least until further categories of oppression are discovered. Everyone else is simultaneously a victim and victimizer, varying only according to the degree to which any particular individual may be relatively overdetermined as one or the other." ... "This framework of purity and pollution effectively sets each against all in a struggle to avoid being targeted. Those with means use wealth and fame to purchase indulgences by conspicuously promoting progressive causes and candidates. Those without show inquisitorial zeal in exposing and condemning oppressors, activities now volatilized by electronic media that promote 'flash mobs' and 'doxing.' Such indulgence-seeking and Puritanical witch-hunting only accelerate the spread of identity politics and the destruction of social bonds. Nor are these effective means of individual self-protection, for ideological purges inevitably eat their own."

https://newdiscourses.com/2020/04/new-calvinists/?fbclid=IwAR3MaDNAjJUvlYn3GR_e1DRQGehZkBgWnkxTvCIXV9kBXQU627ATnCF9-Ic

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/saskatchewan-cihr-indigenous-outrage-professor-1.6232177

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/many-canadians-curious-about-indigenous-ancestry-but-scornful-of-those-who-would-fake-it

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/h-g-carrillo-the-novelist-whose-inventions-went-too-far

The following is an excerpt from the above article about Carrillo, A black man who invented an ethnic heritage for himself-
"... Carrillo’s deceptions led to the unmasking of another professor: Jessica Krug, an expert on African American history, who had falsely claimed to be partially Black. In an online confession, she wrote, 'For the better part of my adult life, every move I’ve made, every relationship I’ve formed, has been rooted in the napalm toxic soil of lies.' She resigned shortly afterward.

In recent decades, various writers have published work under fake ethnic identities—but often the deceptions have involved white writers engaged in perverse acts of grievance about identity politics. In 2015, an obscure white poet named Michael Derrick Hudson posed as a woman named Yi-Fen Chou, then revealed his identity after a poem was selected for the 'Best American Poetry' anthology. But publishing under a name borrowed from another ethnicity is easier than actually assuming the ethnicity associated with that name. In 1984, Daniel James, who had published 'Famous All Over Town,' a novel about Mexican Americans, under the pseudonym Danny Santiago, won a five-thousand-dollar award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, but, seeing no way to show up and claim it, he skipped the ceremony. In the late nineties, Laura Albert began posing as the queer male novelist J. T. LeRoy; her public face was her androgynous relative Savannah Knoop, whose clumsy impersonation ultimately caused the scheme to unravel. The singular aspect of Carroll’s ruse is that he didn’t just write as Carrillo; he became Carrillo. Perhaps he thought that, if he didn’t assume the personality that the name suggested, no one would find his portrait of Cuban American culture convincing. Or maybe the skeptic he was trying hardest to persuade was himself."