Blaming the Victim

In college I was forced to read, “Blaming the Victim” by William Ryan. It is a seminal work in the field of sociology and at the time I read it, the book made me angry as hell. The premise of the book is this – there is an entire class of privileged folk, who want to pretend they are focused on fixing society but really don’t want things to change too much. These folks can appease their conscious by finding reasons why the poor are victims. For example, when this book was written it was popular to say that poor black children didn’t do well in school because they came from broken homes – he goes to great length to describe the stereotypical poor family:

“Negro family” has become a shorthand phrase with stereotyped connotations of matriarchy, fatherlessness, and pervasive illegitimacy. Growing up in the “crumbling” Negro family is supposed to account for most of the racial evils in America. Insiders have the word, of course, and know that this phrase is supposed to evoke images of growing up with a long-absent or never-present father (replaced from time to time perhaps by a series of transient lovers) and with bossy women ruling the roost, so that the children are irreparably damaged. This refers particularly to the poor, bewildered male children, whose psyches are fatally wounded and who never, alas, learn the trick of becoming upright, downright, forthright all-America boys.

Ryan says it’s easy to focus on the innate badness of the “Negro family” instead of focusing on what he believes are the real reasons why poor black children don’t do well in school. He sees the problem this way:

In pursuing this logic, no one remembers to ask questions about the collapsing buildings and torn textbooks; the frightened, insensitive teachers; the six additional desks in the room; the blustering, frightened principals; the relentless segregation; the callous administrator; the irrelevant curriculum; the bigoted or cowardly members of the school board; the insulting history book; the stingy taxpayers; the fairy-tail readers; or the self-serving faculty of the local teachers’ college. We are encouraged to confine our attention to the child and to dwell on all his alleged defects.

This book made me angry because it seemed to forget about personal accountability. No one ever said life was going to be fair. Some people have to work harder than others. Some people have more obstacles, handicaps, and difficulties. Get over it. Focus on doing your personal best with the hand you were dealt.

Don’t get me wrong. I do not condone bigoted school board members and insulting text books. Nor to I condone the broad use of stereotypes. But I also know it’s possible to succeed despite your circumstances. I went to grammar school in the sixties. I was bused into a slum neighborhood where I was one of a half dozen white kids in the entire school. Not only did I go to school in the collapsing building with the torn text books – but I was a hated outsider forced to sit through third grade math and learn to spell between beatings and emergency room visits. So I speak from experience when I say you have a choice. Either you keep your head down and do your best or you give up and give in.

I believe that folks who’ve been given more have a moral obligation to help those who’ve been given less. But that doesn’t absolve those with less from doing the best they can with every available resource. For them to do anything less than their best is just as wrong as not sharing when you have surplus.

I bring this up now because I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of blaming the victim. I don't agree with Ryan's ultimate conclusion, but I do agree blaming the victim is wrong. As a life skill it truly is a vicious and insidious tactic to use against someone. You see it used time and again in abusive situations. When the abuser blames the other person and makes accusations against the person they are abusing it releases the true abuser from being responsible for their actions. They can cry self-defense. They can speak of how they were wounded. They can seek solace and support and maintain their position of power as the center of attention.

When you blame the victim it also makes them appear less worthy of the support and assistance from bystanders. It forces people watching to choose. Of course, people do not want to support the aggressor so blaming the victim serves the duel purpose of increasing the power of the true abuser and weakening the support system of the truly abused. Victim blaming undermines the true victim’s ability to self-protect and thus furthers the goals of the abuser.

You can see numerous examples of this everywhere. How many times have you heard an abusive husband say, “If she only had dinner ready when I got home from work I wouldn’t have had to beat her.” Or what about the infamous, “If she hadn’t worn sexy clothes I wouldn’t have had to rape her.” These examples almost seem absurd because as a society we have recognized them for what they are – groundless excuses to divert attention and shun accountability.

What happens when the claims of the abuser are not so easily detectable? As a supervisor I see it all the time at work. One employee comes in to complain about another. A good victim blamer will know their audience’s hot buttons, so they usually get me good and worked up with their tail of woe. But upon closer investigation, I find out that things are not nearly the way they were originally presented. Luckily, at work events are more clearly documented and prescribed by procedure. So it’s somewhat easier to untangle the whole mess.

Personal relationships are not so easy to dissect. Whenever I hear someone talk about how they’ve been abused and hurt I usually find myself asking – why is this person really sharing this information? I am sometimes skeptical of claims people make about being railroaded, bullied, or emotionally abused. I worry about being used by the abuser to further their ends. But that leaves me with a bit of a catch-22. Does that mean that no one is ever abused? No very much the opposite. Good people are abused and hurt every day. It’s just that they’re often being hurt by the most vocal… those that are shouting about injustices done to them are usually pulling the strings of injustice under the table.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this... my mom is a heck of a good abuser and she cries the loudest when talking about her own suffering. So, from observing my mom and a few other victim blamers during the course of my life I have come up with a few things that I ask myself when I hear a new tale of woe...

* What does this person gain if I believe them?
* Who could be hurt if I believe them?
* Has this person recounted more than one occurrence of the same or similar hurt – in other words, is there a pattern of behavior?
* What has the person done to correct the situation?
* Is there specific evidence that the person really tired to make these corrections?
* And the most important question… Has the person accepted accountability for their own contributions to the situation? And I mean really accepted – not just given it lip service?

I guess it all comes back to personal accountability. Life is not fair. I didn’t like Ryan’s book because he did not demand personal accountability from the folks he saw as disadvantaged. But it doesn’t end there. We have the exact accountability from everyone. It is obscene that people are allowed to use the cloak of victim hood as a shield while they annihilate the people that care about them.