|
|
Somebodies and Nobodies
| Robert W. Fuller, former president of Oberlin College, has coined a new term for the basis of all social injustice, rankism and rankist.While rank itself is not a problem, it is the ‘kicking the dog’ syndrome, a perpetual habit of abusing those we perceive as being lower on the ladder that Fuller is attempting to put the spotlight on. |
Unfortunately, there’s a lot to spotlight: a hockey mom or dad yelling at their son or daughter from the sideline, an executive telling an subordinate to forget lunch and ‘pick up my dry-cleaning’, a tenured professor taking credit for the research done for him or her by a grad student.
Fuller wants us to identify such humiliations so that they can be ended. He is urging each of us to come to the point where our own “dignity is not negotiable”.
Some of the questions Fuller asks his readers:
• Why is it we learn the names of our doctors, but not their assistants who make our appointments?
• Why is it we expect benefits from our employers, yet we do not provide the same for those who do household labour for us?
Fuller argues that the attitudes behind our personal behaviour…the kind of “sucking up” we do to those we perceive have authority over us, and brushing off those we think don’t, has a part to play in corporate corruption, school drop-out rates and even terrorism.
To this thinker, rankism links two major revolutions of the 20th century: civil rights and human rights. For him, the non-negotiable demands of a movement for full human dignity are a living wage, universal health care and quality education for all.
“The fact that life isn’t fair doesn’t mean that we have to be unfair to each other. We don’t want authority over others half as much as we want to avoid subservience ourselves. Equal dignity both suffices and satisfies.”
Work that Works would like to hear your stories of an incident in which someone “pulled rank” on you, and used their power abusively …
Please drop us a line... and we’ll print the responses in our next edition. Like Fuller, we believe that rankism is both a conscious or an unconscious dynamic in every family, school, factory, office and corporation….and we would like to be part of the energy and agency to help to stamp it out… |
|
|
