So many of my white friends and I are anguished over the injustice of yet another Black man murdered by police. We find ourselves agreeing with Black Lives Matter that the strong and necessary response to the recent killings involves working not only for justice in these individual cases, but also for addressing the systemic racism underlying the repeated injustices.
Calls for system change must be more than slogans to which we nod our approval. The change must involve going beyond our comfort zone—affecting how we communicate with political leaders and friends about the types of change needed, and impressing on them how urgent our efforts are. Even if we can prevent the imminent destruction to the planet posed by global warming and nuclear war, survival demands that we also work to build a more just society.
System change has many parts and provides many opportunities for involvement. A first step is to communicate to political leaders our dismay that a system providing greater funding for policing, criminalizing, and imprisoning people than for feeding, providing healthcare, and housing deprives people of dignity and healthy lives. We must also question why budgets for urban police provide military grade materials for surveilling and shooting protestors, when money for human social services is insufficient. In response to our own question, we must point out that this systemic misallocation of resources contributes to a bloated Defense Department budget that bolsters authoritarian governments that neglect the needs of their own people.
To take that first step, you can phone the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 to obtain contact information for elected officials. You can send the same message to candidates for office and as op-eds or letters to local media. For example, you can recommend forming a nonpartisan group of experts to confront the legacy of slavery and racism in the U.S. and propose ways forward, as proposed by Representative Barbara Lee
A second action involves assisting community organizations to speak with a larger megaphone by joining together. Several groups across the country are working hard to promote racial justice in our systems, amplify Black voices, and rid our country of an implicit caste system. If you’re able to do so, you can help by splitting a donation among organizations such as these, Reclaim the Block, Movement for Black Lives, Black Visions Collective, and Violence in Boston, as recommended by Senator Elizabeth Warren.
In addition, an important step we can all take is to examine the often unnoticed ways in which our own actions may unwittingly impede the needed change from a racist society to a more just and fair society. There are ways to be more reflective and to be more active in addressing racism in sectors of our personal lives, in schools, in work situations, and within families. A well thought out compilation of resources specifically for anti-racism work can be found here.
This is a lightly edited post originally published by Dr. Pilisuk on the discussion group of the Psychologists for Social Responsibility, of which he is a member.
They smashed up things and creatures and then
retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was
that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
The Outrage of Billionaires
The data are stark and compelling. The richest 400 families in the United States own financial assets
that exceed the wealth of the bottom 60% of all American households
combined. U.S. billionaires pay taxes at a lower effective rate than
working class families. The CEOs of S&P 500 companies, averaging over $14 million in
annual compensation, make roughly as much in a single day as their
median employee earns in an entire year. At the same time, research shows that such extreme inequality between rich and
poor is a driving force behind many of society’s most profound and corrosive
ills. These disparities are associated with diminished levels of
physical health, mental health, educational achievement, social mobility,
trust, and community life. They’re also linked to heightened levels of
infant mortality, obesity, drug abuse, crime, violence, and incarceration.
In light of these realities, it’s no surprise
that some political leaders are calling for dramatic policy changes designed to tamp down economic inequality.
Equally unsurprising, some members of the so-called billionaire class in this
country are outraged by these proposals. Responding to Senator Bernie Sanders’s
comment that he doesn’t think billionaires should exist, Stephen Schwarzman —
the billionaire CEO of the private equity firm Blackstone Group — told a New York City audience, “Maybe Bernie Sanders shouldn’t
exist.” On the Fox Business Network, Ken Langone, the billionaire co-founder of
Home Depot, angrily called Sanders a “blowhard” and asked, “What the hell has he done for the little people?” And
CNBC host Jim Cramer reported that Wall Street executives — privately discussing
the aspirations of Senator Elizabeth Warren — had told him “she’s got to be
stopped.”
Complaints like these are nothing new from
America’s super-rich. Almost a decade ago, Schwarzman (noted above) compared the possible elimination of a favorable hedge fund
tax loophole to “when Hitler invaded Poland.” A few years later, in a letter to
the Wall Street Journal, now-deceased billionaire venture capitalist Tom
Perkins wrote, “I would call attention to the parallels
of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘one-percent,’ namely its Jews, to
the progressive war on the American one-percent, namely the ‘rich.’” And fellow
billionaire Sam Zell toldBloomberg News, “This country should not talk
about envy of the one-percent. It should talk
about emulating the one-percent.”
But should we really be trying to emulate the
one-percent? Perhaps not. Psychological research suggests that the super-rich,
as a group, aren’t necessarily the role models we collectively need if our goal
is to advance the common good and build a more decent society. In particular,
one reason to be skeptical involves a constellation of interlinked personality traits —
Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and
narcissism — that psychologists call the “Dark Triad.” The
originators of the term summarize it this way: “To varying degrees, all three entail a
socially malevolent character with behavior tendencies toward self-promotion,
emotional coldness, duplicity, and aggressiveness.”
Let’s now consider each of these three
components separately, in regard to what they may tell us about the
one-percent.
Machiavellianism
The first trait of the Dark Triad —
Machiavellianism — refers to one’s willingness to deceitfully manipulate and
exploit people and circumstances for personal gain. In an illuminating series of
studies, psychologists have found that this tendency is more common
among those with greater wealth and status.
These researchers compared the actions of
participants categorized as either “upper class” or “lower class” — based on
measures of socioeconomic status — in a variety of different situations. For
example, one study used the age, model, and appearance of cars as a proxy for
the drivers’ wealth. Those driving more expensive vehicles cut off pedestrians
and other cars more often at a busy intersection. In a second study, higher
social-class participants reported a greater likelihood of engaging in various
unethical behaviors, such as keeping extra change that was mistakenly given to
them by a cashier. In a third study, half of the participants first compared
themselves to people at the top of the socioeconomic ladder, while the other
half instead compared themselves to those at the bottom of the ladder.
Afterward, those in the second group — now primed to see themselves as better
off than others — took more candy from a jar they were told had treats intended
for children in a lab nearby. In yet another study, participants were
instructed to play the role of an employer involved a hypothetical salary
negotiation with a prospective employee. They were told that this job hunter
was specifically looking for a long-term position — and that this available opening
would only last six-months. The researchers found that those higher in social
class were more likely to deceptively withhold this important information from
the applicant. A final study involved a game of chance using the computerized
rolling of dice. Here too, the participants higher in social class cheated more
often in order to receive a modest cash prize.
With findings like these, is it surprising that many huge corporations — controlled by individuals with extraordinary personal wealth — have employed Machiavellian tactics that fail to honor the public trust? There’s no shortage of high-profile examples. At Enron, officials fraudulently propped up the company’s stock price, leading thousands of unsuspecting employees to lose their retirement savings when the company collapsed shortly thereafter. General Motors turned a blind eye to manufacturing defects and then, despite the heightened risk of driver injury and death, engaged in a years-long cover-up. R.J. Reynolds and other tobacco companies spent decades withholding scientific evidence and misleading the public about the harmful effects of smoking. Large for-profit colleges and training institutes have lured students into expensive programs with deceptive advertising, have offered them false assurances of future employment, and have saddled them with lifetimes of debt. During the financial collapse a decade ago, investment banking giant Goldman Sachs recommended and sold to its clients billions of dollars of deceptively valued securities tied to risky home mortgages — in order to unload these toxic assets from its own accounts. And pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma continued to aggressively market OxyContin for years after the company learned that the drug was highly addictive, contributing to tens of thousands of deaths from prescription opioid overdoses.
Note from KMM: Pegeansays: Reprinted with permission from Psychology Today, October 25, 2019.To be continued.
Trying to make sense out of human behavior, figuring out what makes people tick, is not just a concern of psychologists and social scientists. It seems to be a pretty widespread human desire. Moreover, given mankind’s long history of inhumanity to fellow humans, and the risks of such behaviors pretty much destroying all of us in this nuclear age, understanding that propensity to inhumane behavior becomes crucially important.
One way of understanding the differences between people who seem to endorse and promote inhumane behavior and people who risk personal safety to help rescue others from violence and cruelty is provided by theories of moral disengagement and engagement, often discussed on this blog—e.g., here, and here, and here .
In this brief new series on moral disengagement and engagement, I offer examples of major types of moral disengagement and contrasting examples of the corollary forms of moral engagement, using excerpts from speeches of two well-known contemporary politicians. My goal is not to get you to label one speaker as a monster and one as a model of perfection, but to consider the potential implications of the different ways of thinking they are promoting.
Examples of morally disengaged versus morally engaged ways of thinking and arguing
Moral disengagement: Pseudomoral justifications: “When Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats, and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn’t be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water.”
Moral engagement: Principled moral reasoning: [One] of my favorite passages of scripture is, ‘in as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’ Matthew 25:40…. The passage teaches about God in each of us, that we are bound to each other and called to act. Not to sit, not to wait, but to act—all of us together.
******
Moral disengagement: Euphemistic language: “The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families.”
Moral engagement: Realistic language/ Telling it like it is: Arizona’s SB 1070 [immigration law] is a stupid law — it is stupid, it is racist, it is unconstitutional and it should be struck down…Let’s say it loud and clear to the Republicans: If you truly want to do something about immigration, then get out of the way, get on the right side of history and let us pass comprehensive immigration reform.”
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Moral disengagement: Misrepresenting, minimizing, or denying the consequences of one’s violence: “I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me… I would bomb the sh**t out of them.”
Moral engagement: Addressing consequences: The system is rigged….Oil companies guzzle down billions in subsidies. Billionaires pay lower tax rates than their secretaries. Wall Street CEOs—the same ones who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs—still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them.
Pretend you are a neutral observer in another country listening to this rhetoric in English. What are your thoughts about the different ways listeners might be influenced by these arguments?