Earning Justice©
George G.
Epp
The broad, North
American culture seems to have settled down to accepting the normality of
oppressor/oppressed, victim/victimizer consciousness, seems to me. In feminism,
it has the character of a glass ceiling; in colonizing history, it’s about
indigenous/settler conflicting interests; in race relations, it’s about
majority vs. minority rights and responsibilities; in religion,
Christian/Jew/Muslim/Sikh etc. consciousness. Even sexuality and gender have
provided occasion for majority/minority, oppressor/oppressed scenarios.
To me, this observation points
toward the need for a new way of viewing victimization in North America. A new
way that doesn’t begin and end with an apology and momentary feelings of
empathy that pretty much go away when the next work-week begins. Are there
possibilities for new approaches, or is being either conquered or conqueror,
victimized or victimizer built inescapably into human nature?
People talk a lot about “playing
the victim card,” of the phenomenon of shifting blame for one’s own
unsatisfactory life on persons and groups that appear to be living more-than-satisfactory
lives. Not to say that there aren’t persons and groups that deliberately victimize
others for their own gain, or that there aren’t persons or groups that are
targeted for victimization. Far from it. What seems more relevant to this
discussion is the remedy for victimization and exploitation, and the clear
historical evidence that screaming “I/we, is/are victims of _________ (fill in
the blank) appears to have limited utility.
We need just to look at the experience of coal miners in Great Britain
after the industrial revolution, men who were basically held in slavery to
hard, dangerous work by the threat of starvation. Until they banded together and
withdrew their labour, little progress toward de-victimization occurred. Or we could look to the peasant revolts
happening across Europe in the 15th and 16th Centuries
for an opposite outcome; pitchforks and shovels were no match against the
palace guards and armies of the ruling classes. So what do our histories teach
us that would be useful in the Americas today?
The loud clamour about being a victim along with finger pointing at the supposed
victimizer—often seems, in the end, to be little more than frustratingly futile
noise. By Old Testament standards, justice is the foundation on which progress
must be based. Justice has very practical and very discrete components; it’s
not an abstract concept. What’s required is the insistence on discrete policies
and practices that are just.
Do Pride Parades, Black Lives Matter marches, Missing and Murdered
Indigenous Women inquiries fall into the category of raising awareness without fostering
a direction toward remedies? Oft repeated slogans and declarations of
victimizations seem to make little difference in fact, and predictably turn
into white noise in the ears of the intended audience. Is the reason for this
the fact that actions too often demand the whole enchilada rather than setting
goals on discrete components of justice: equality in law, equal pay for equal
work, equal access to education, equal access to health care.
There are exceptions, of course. “Defund the Police” was a more
specific, more creative effort than most and resulted in a still-ongoing
reassessment of police practice. To me, that suggests that demonstration that
is too general leaves neither the victim nor the victimizer with a handle to
grasp, even when awareness and empathy are awakened. The Truth and
Reconciliation Report, the United Nations Declaration on
the Rights of Indigenous Peoples appear to be monumental steps forward in
remedying the victimization of Canada’s indigenous peoples, but are they more
than documents that are easily given lip-service while the legislating of
actual, detailed change is easily postponed … time and again?
So what are some characteristics of
actions that actually precipitate change? Recognizing that members of a
preferred and privileged demographic have little interest in change, do victim-cultures,
individuals and groups need to abandon the accusing strategy and reach for
something else? As I’ve already mentioned, most successful campaigns for change
historically were guided by victims, not by the victimizing entity. The
formation of unions, for instance, has always been anathema to the corporate
machine. To this day, large corporations fight tooth and nail to prevent
workers organizing; their interest is in the status quo where some glaring
similarities exist between the current labour situation and the British coal
miners way back when. The right to exploit labour on the wage side continues in
the campaigns of the corporate, business sectors to keep the minimum wage as
low as possible. Labour exploitation has long been an engine driving the
concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. In North America, the attack on
unionization has been persistent and largely successful; only 30% of workers in
Canada belong to a union that bargains for their wages and working conditions.
Many white, settler-class Canadians have expressed deep disgust with prevalent forms of victimization: indigenous poverty, police discriminatory behaviour, low-wage McJobs, Quebec’s “secular society” laws, etc. But does my sympathy for children growing up in the bad water, bad housing, second-rate education opportunities of many northern reserves do these children any good? If I empathize with Syrian refugees attempting to adjust to Canada and hear that a woman has been fired from a school staff for wearing a hijab, does my empathy get her her job back? How frustrated do I need to get with my inability to effect positive changes before I look for a new way?
∞
In order to win a game, a soccer team needs to assemble on the
playing field and carry out a strategy whereby each player fulfills a distinct
role. No games will ever be won if the defense has slept in, the goalie has
decided to stay home and watch TV and the centre and right/left wingers are
fighting on the bench over who gets to do what.
Similarly,
change is most often driven by movements of same-goal-oriented people … in
large numbers, people who may individually have felt helpless, like a person
trying to win a soccer game by him/her/themselves. Movements form around
leadership, they thrive by organization and goal-directed activity. They give
each member a role in their efforts. They don’t take no for an answer. Imagine
how things would be different if there existed an All-Black Union, with
striking as the way to assert their need for equality rights and practices.
Although
you’d hardly know it now, Saskatchewan used to be a model of social democracy,
a province where you could get medical treatment even if your means were
limited. The active leaders who turned the tide included J.S. Woodsworth and
Tommy Douglas, and the movement they centered was called the Canadian
Commonwealth Federation, or CCF. Against fierce opposition, they fought their
way into political power and made first Hospitalization Insurance and later
broader Medical Insurance happen. This model eventually led to Medicare as we
know it across Canada.
Starting a new political party is
probably too lofty an aspiration for most of us. At the same time, protest
parties’ record of forcing change is not good and they generally don’t last
long. What makes more sense is what’s called, “Rational-instrumental
social action, actions that are carried out in order to achieve a specific
result.” The action Max Weber speaks of centers on one specific objective,
like clean water for one reserve, maybe, or a new school for one town. It may,
of course, include political action, like running pro-objective candidates for
town council or tribal council, but everything it does politically is tailored
to further one objective at a time.
You’d be right in wondering how, for
instance, rational-instrumental social action could
formulate a movement against discrimination and prejudice. Can you remember a
time when argument changed anyone’s mind about, for instance, racial supremacy?
And if tackling the big human, attitudinal issues that underly both victimizer’s
and victim’s worldviews doesn’t work, can we hope that rational-instrumental
social action will bring us closer? And what would be an example, say,
of such an action that would answer our horror over the residential schools
issue in a way that would relieve their victims?
I repeat: the impetus for meaningful
change seems historically to be driven by the victims. First Nations are
demanding the Pope’s apology for the Catholic Church’s role in Residential
Schools on the one hand, and the locating of burial sites and the
identifying of the children buried around Residential Schools on the other.
These two demands can represent the initiation of two rational-instrumental
social action projects that need to be sustained with persistent and
vigorous effort, such that the body of victims and the culpability of the
victimizers are made clear and graphic until these two discrete goals are met.
The danger is, as always, that the two
rational-instrumental social actions will degenerate into a fuzzy,
general diatribe against white and/or Christian racism, and as I said before,
projects to simply change people’s attitudes—even when accompanied by
much loud protest—seem always to be futile. That’s why an action needs to be rational—which
racism is not—and it must be instrumental, describable and with a
measurable outcome. The road to equality and fairness for minorities will likely
only be achieved in the accumulation of rational-instrumental social actions.
To make these actions persevere and succeed, the victim/minority must find
a way to act in unity of purpose; they must, in effect, adopt the union model.
This is one example. The progress of
civilization toward what the prophet Isaiah saw as a peaceable kingdom (where
the lion and lamb lie down together) and which Jesus pointed toward in the
Sermon on the Mount and which Hindus find in the Bhagavad Gita will be earned
and won in steps of rational-instrumental social action, seems to me. In
a world that more and more reveres independence, social action is an uphill
battle. Furthermore, even though the victims are driving an action for change,
they find themselves—almost by definition—as the weaker one in the
victim/victimizer struggle. The only way to balance this equation is in
numbers, in unity and in clarity of purpose.
For those who lament residential
schools victimization of indigenous Canadians but are most easily associated
with the oppressor culture, getting out of the way is sometimes the best
strategy. Facilitating the movement (providing food and drink to protestors,
for instance) might be another way. To show solidarity with a cause is best
demonstrated with action that proves our words are sincere.
This leaves one question for me: how
can I—who am often numbered with the privileged oppressor but who recognizes
the injustices others bear—engage in the bringing about of the necessary
changes so that a certain case of victimization is mitigated? Ought we churches
and social progressives form a league and ourselves begin to emulate the rational-instrumental
social actions that would move us closer to justice and fairness? If, for
instance, the plight of the people of Gaza were the issue, would our united,
clear goals for justice for them sway government to take helpful action? And if
we were to agree in this league to strike until such action was taken, would
that succeed?
Or should we continue—as now—to send
out our thoughts and prayers for them to chew on?
Politics as a word means the
social/fiscal arrangements we devise in order to live peaceful, fulfilled lives
as citizens. We place our confidence in elected politicians to enact laws and
policies that will have this effect. Unfortunately, lawmaking, policy making
are tainted by calculations of electability—why consider the basic needs of a
minority who represent only 10% of the voters, for instance? This phenomenon
dashes any hope of a political party ever forming a cohesive “league for
change.” At election time, parties come out with lists of policies geared to
resonate with their base and after the election, promises made become
negotiable because one eye must remain fixed on the next election.
However we choose to be catalysts for
justice, this weakness of democracies should be kept in mind. We can easily be
wooed into membership in a party and be caught up in the propaganda, the zero-sum
game of winning/losing as if it were all like a football game. Such loyalties
to even badly-flawed political forces means that we’re better off setting goals
and organizing around particular, specific issues and working hard enough to
influence political parties, even if their objective, originally, was simply to
get our votes.
Here’s a final thought. What if large numbers
of Canadians would join in a voting strike until a reasonable form of
proportional representation in parliament was written into law? Promised by
Justin Trudeau in the 2015 election, we now know that that promise was never intended
to be kept. An election artificially skewed
in the Liberals favour by first-past-the-post election rules kept them in power in 2019.
