4th October 2016
Hierarchies of Persecution and How to Get Out of Them
We live in a society that is riddled with hierarchies of persecution. Most people to a greater or lesser extent, awarely or unawarely, feel that they have to put up with being persecuted by those who are up hierarchy while persecuting those who are down hierarchy. Some people try to get out of their situations as victims by moving up hierarchy but they still remain open to being persecuted by those even higher up. A more successful approach is to move out of the hierarchies by becoming more self empowered.
There is a common misconception that if someone is treated badly they would not mete out the same sort of treatment to anyone else. In practice the reverse is far more often the case, they will treat others every bit as badly as they were treated.
The evidence for this is all around us. The history of The Lower East Side in New York, for example, is one of each wave of immigrants becoming established and persecuting the next wave of immigrants. Young people who bully have probably themselves been bullied or ill treated.1 In the workplace managers who are pressurised by their superiors will pressurise those under them. The actions of government making unrealistic demands of, say, the health service or educations systems while being unsupportive and cutting resources gets passed right down through the organisations until, inevitably, patients and students suffer.
What we have is hierarchies of persecution, people allow themselves to be persecuted by those above them and persecute those below them. Whether someone is up hierarchy relative to another or not depends on a number of factors, some well known and others quite subtle. White people are up hierarchy from black people. Men are up hierarchy from women. Rich over poor, better educated over less well educated, straight over gay and so on. Appearance and body language are factors as well as just being somehow different.
Many people do not even realise that they are victims of persecution and even fewer recognise how they persecute others. Like everyday sexism, it passes unnoticed by victims and persecutors.
For people who identify themselves as victims there are two broad approaches to change. One is a relatively powerless approach, move up the hierarchy, the other more empowered which is to move out.
Moving up the hierarchy involves things like getting promoted, getting rich or getting qualifications. The problem with this is that although they may be able to persecute people who used to persecute them, there are still people further up hierarchy for whom they are still victims.
Another way of moving up hierarchy is to get the rules changed so that the persecutors can be punished, or persecuted. Equality legislation is a way in which this is done. Unfortunately this relies on the erstwhile persecutors making and enforcing the rules. For example, predominantly white, male, middle or upper class and relatively rich legislators and judiciary are expected to make and enforce the laws. Unsurprisingly such legislation is frequently found to be inadequate and poorly enforced.
Another problem is that such legislation may be a sop. For example, gender equality legislation has not stopped the oppression of women from getting worse. The portrayal of women in the media and advertising is as oppressive as ever. Indeed it may be worse because it has to be subtle so as not to be seen as obviously sexist. In some ways the legislation has exacerbated the oppression, women are expected to be equal in the work place – and still be housewives and mothers.
In effect the pressure for objective equality encourages people to take their eyes off the ball. As Germain Greer says in the case of women, they lost sight of liberation and settled for equality2.
Liberation is often thought of as being free of constraints, laws, customs or prison cells, applied by others. But freedom can also be seen as being a state of mind and liberation as freeing ourselves from the constraints that we have internalised. In other words freeing ourselves from our internalised oppression, the results of oppression that we have internalised. Freeing ourselves from the musts and oughts, from feeling that we cannot do this when objectively we can, or we have to do that when objectively we do not.
This is empowerment and it is the way out of the hierarchy of oppression. As people become more self empowered they become more resistant to persecution and less likely to persecute others.
People in their own power will realise that they have many ways of responding to persecution. Very likely their persona will convey “don’t even think about trying to persecute me”. If someone does try it on they may get anything from being ignored to a very forceful rebuff, from being loved3 to being abandoned or having the situation transformed.
These are reasons why it is important that any approaches to persecution, discrimination or bullying should be empowering. The approaches should be open to people whether they take the roles of persecutors, victims or both. Neither role is a successful way of relating and everyone can benefit from being more empowered.
In particular it is important not to try to impose particular solutions on people. The aim should always be to help people to be aware of many possibilities, to develop the knowledge and abilities to act on more possibilities and to choose for themselves what to do. This is the learning which is the core of empowerment.
1 Bullying Statistics (2016) Available from: http://www.ditchthelabel.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Annual-Bullying-Survey-2016-Digital.pdf [Accessed 4 October 2016]
2 Greer, G. (2007). The whole woman. London: Black Swan.
3 “To love someone is to accept them as they are and to support them to be more of what they, in enlightenment, would choose to be.” Self quote.