Do Americans Have Problems With Identifying with Victims?

There has been a lot of discussions about the United States in which some have replied in disparaging terms toward victims (i.e. those who experience suffering). I am wondering whether the national culture really does embrace such an intolerance toward victims and their suffering?

Why are Americans unable to identify with those who have been hurt by circumstances larger than themselves?

What started this attack on victims? Who is responsble for encouraging others not to feel for victims (9/11, Hurricane Katrina, etc.) and what they experienced?

I'll have some sources explaining this later, but I would like you guys to put in your two cents about this phenomenon.

You mean empathy?

I think there are many people in "western culture" who lack empathy these days.

I think it comes from our self-centered, individualistic, instant-gratification, winner-take-all culture.

There used to be a time when "community" meant something and the "good of the community" was a real concern to people. Many have written about the "death of the commons" and people's inability to even get to know their neighbours now.

In the case of the US, I truly believe that the communist witch hunts of the McCarthy era did a lot to destroy anything that pertained to the common good because of the anti-communism mindset that was ingrained into the whole society at that time. It's still with us today.

Other factors play a part IMO. Mobility, endless entertainment and distractions and the spoiled brat sense of entitlement many people seem to possess.
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It's a defense mechanism. If you make the victims less than yourself you can convince yourself that it couldn't happen to you. It happens in a lot of different ways, but I don't think it's flat out hatred almost ever.

Some people explain AIDS and reassure themselves that they won't get it by saying it's God's judgement.

Some people tell themselves that they or their wives or their daughters couldn't be raped because a woman invites it by being a tease.

Some people decide that you'd have to be on crack or a drunk to be homeless, or even poor because they don't want to admit that all it would take is a car accident to make them almost unemployable and put them in that boat.

When a person feels threatened, they run away, they lie, or they fight. When life and society themselves are the threat... well, people's ideology can get pretty skewed.


Speaking of which, there was a shooting outside of my house about one paragraph ago (obviously I called the cops before I continued posting) and I'm pretty sure whoever was involved deserved it considering the nature of my neighborhood. (don't you just love irony?)

Originally posted by ceci2006
What started this attack on victims? Who is responsble for encouraging others not to feel for victims (9/11, Hurricane Katrina, etc.) and what they experienced?

I'll have some sources explaining this later, but I would like you guys to put in your two cents about this phenomenon.

You folks have got to be kidding. Who in America has ever "encouraged others not to feel for victims"? Esp. when you're talking 9/11 and Katrina?

Americans are the most giving, caring nation on earth. We are the first to offer aid to anyone who needs it.

I suspect that this thread isn't about true victims at all, and is just one more attempt to bring up the topic of "White Privilege".

*Yawn*

Your threads are soooo predictable.....

I am going to guess that under all the PC BS here this has to do with Whites not wanting to give you money for being Black. We all know you see your self as a victim of White behavior.... sometimes I think you might actually think you yourself where a slave at one point!

Why doesn't America "feel for the victim" .. depends.. is the victim really a victim, or do they just encourage the helpless victim mentality when in reality they are not the victim at all.

Your not going to get reparations, so I would stop waiting for that check to come in the mail.

I don't think I agree with you on this subject. I won't make any judgments though until I see some links. I think the opposite may be true. I assume you are talking about social programs in the U.S. and how we don't have many. I think the opposite of you...

I believe giving your government tax money, forcibly, to help people. Is less fulfilling and caring than donating to specific charities out of your own pocket. believe it or not millions do in America.

If nothing else that is something to think about. Right?

Thank you all for your responses so far. It brings a lot of insight into this thread.

I'd like to say, before I answer your posts, that I think that the lack of empathy might have something to do with the overriding identification with authoritarism in American society. This is from Henry Giroux:

The New Authoritarianism in the United States

As Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri point out in Multitude, war has become the organizing principle of society and the foundation for politics and other social relations. [13] Militarism has become the most powerful form of public pedagogy, a mode of biopolitics shaping all aspects of social life, and one of its consequences is a growing authoritarianism that encourages profit-hungry monopolies, the ideology of faith-based certainty, and the undermining of any vestige of critical education, dissent, and dialogue. Education in this case is either severely narrowed and trivialized in the media or is converted into training and character reform in the schools. Within higher education, democracy appears as an excess, if not a pathology, as right-wing ideologues and corporate wannabe administrators increasingly police what faculty say, teach, and do in their courses. And it is going to get worse.

Given that the Bush administration governs by “dividing the country along [the] fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule,” [14] the future does not look bright for democracy.

[...]

Abstracted from the ideal of public commitment, the new authoritarianism represents a political and economic practice and form of militarism that loosens the connection among substantive democracy, critical agency, and critical education.

[...]


Under such circumstances, pedagogy must be embraced as a moral and political practice, one that is both directive and the outgrowth of struggles designed to resist the increasing depoliticization of political culture that is the hallmark of the current Bush revolution. [...] Within the current historical context, struggles over power take on a symbolic and discursive as well as a material and institutional form. The struggle over education is about more than the struggle over meaning and identity; it is also about how meaning, knowledge, and values are produced, legitimated, and operate within economic and structural relations of power.

With that being said, it has nothing to do with reparations or social programs.

Instead, it has to do with a condition in American society that openly promotes a lack of conscience and empathy against the suffering of others, especially when it has to do with an emphasis on the authoritarian personality:

authoritarian personality

A personality pattern reflecting a desire for security, order, power, and status, with a desire for structured lines of authority, a conventional set of values or outlook, a demand for unquestioning obedience, and a tendency to be hostile toward or use as scapegoats individuals of minority or nontraditional groups.

I tend to believe that authoritarianism is encouraged during the present age of America through the repetition of certain ideals, rampant nationalism after September 11, 2001, and the polarizing use of "black and white" langugage (Americans, good. Terrorists, bad, for example) that seems to encourage a lack of identification with anyone that does not fit with the perception the "average American".

With this aspect in light, I truly don't believe that America encourages identification with victims, especially during the present day. Instead, they encourage more or less a lack of empathy--especially with the language of some to disparage people who are suffering through infantilizing their experiences and joking about what they've been through.

With that being said, I'll be back with addresses to the posts as well as some more sources later.

In the meantime, feel free to comment more on this topic. This is getting interesting.


[edit on 17-3-2007 by ceci2006]

Mod Edit: Excessive Bolding – Please Review This Link.

[edit on 17/3/2007 by Mirthful Me]

Originally posted by ceci2006
There has been a lot of discussions about the United States in which some have replied in disparaging terms toward victims (i.e. those who experience suffering).

I'm sure "some" (like Ann Coulter, for example) have replied in disparaging terms toward victims. Some people aren't compassionate. Some people are selfish. Some are uncomfortable with other people's misfortune, for whatever reason. That's just the way some people are. But I believe the vast majority of Americans have compassion toward people who suffer.

Why are Americans unable to identify with those who have been hurt by circumstances larger than themselves?

I don't think Americans are unable to identify with people who have been hurt.

Who is responsble for encouraging others not to feel for victims (9/11, Hurricane Katrina, etc.) and what they experienced?

What? I'll be looking forward to reading your sources about people who are encouraging others to not feel for the victims of 9/11 and Katrina. Because I have only heard of a very few people (individuals - Ann Coulter is the only one I can think of) who don't have empathy and compassion for the people who suffered under those disasters.

After 9/11, "We were all New Yorkers", After Katrina, New Orleans was our neighbor. We still have a huge hole in our heart for the suffering of the people involved.

The government may have a problem with empathy, but the people are compassionate and empathetic. I think it's important to make that distinction. We volunteer and donate. We open our homes and wallets. We give $250 billion to charity.

Foundation Center

The American Association of Fundraising Counsel (AAFRC) Trust for Philanthropy, publishers of "Giving USA," released their estimations of total charitable contributions in the U.S. for the year 2004. Total giving is estimated at nearly $248.52 billion for the year 2004, an increase of 5 percent over revised 2003 figures. The Trust has estimated that 11.6% of this figure, or $28.8 billion, was given by independent and community foundations. (Corporate foundation support is included in the overall figure for corporate giving — 4.8%, or $12 billion.) This is well below the largest contributors to charity (individuals), who gave an estimated 75.6%, or $187.92 billion.

Granted, it takes more than money to show empathy, but the fact that American citizens are so willing to open their wallets is an indication of their ability to empathize.

Empathy for Katrina Victims Easy to Find

We here in the Tennessee Valley have taken our share of tornado hits over the years... So, while we assess and repair the comparatively light wind and water damage here, our thoughts are really with the neighbors along the Gulf Coast where Katrina came ashore with 145 mph winds strong enough to rip off the outer layer of the Superdome roof in New Orleans.
...
Don't forget, many organizations, such as the Red Cross and Salvation Army, stand ready to help the storm victims. Your contributions to these charities help greatly.

Originally posted by jsobecky
...just one more attempt to bring up the topic of "White Privilege".

Originally posted by Rockpuck
...this has to do with Whites not wanting to give you money for being Black. We all know you see your self as a victim of White behavior....

You know it's funny (in a sad pathetic way) that it's YOU GUYS who are bringing race into this discussion and not the other way around.

Do you even realise how stupid and ignorant that looks?

You are making leaps in logic and not even allowing the original poster to discuss anything but race because it is YOU who are bringing up the topic. And it's off-topic as far as I'm concerned in this post about empathy.

You two are the ones playing the race card here.

Back on topic!
.

I think one reason some people tend to not empathize with real victims is media coverage.
The media loves to cover awful events in people's lives ad nauseum. Like Anna Nicole Simpson's death and the whole Britney Spears mess of a life. Or Lisa Nowak, the former NASA astronaut.
We love to see the misery of famous or not so famous--infamous--people. It's news or so we are told.

The media also beats a topic to death.
Take the devastating tornado that hit the high school in Alabama. It was all you heard about for days it seemed.
Too much coverage of one event while other news is ignored.

The net effect of this is that we are anesthetized to real human tragedy.

Originally posted by Gools

Originally posted by jsobecky
...just one more attempt to bring up the topic of "White Privilege".

Originally posted by Rockpuck
...this has to do with Whites not wanting to give you money for being Black. We all know you see your self as a victim of White behavior....

You know it's funny (in a sad pathetic way) that it's YOU GUYS who are bringing race into this discussion and not the other way around.

Do you even realise how stupid and ignorant that looks?

You are making leaps in logic and not even allowing the original poster to discuss anything but race because it is YOU who are bringing up the topic. And it's off-topic as far as I'm concerned in this post about empathy.

You two are the ones playing the race card here.

Back on topic!

.

Ah, but Gools.. I don't think you know Ceci like the rest here... shes playing a game you see.

Look past the words.

Look at her past.

Connect the two. This is her way of subtly hinting that the reason whites don't want to pay reparations to blacks is because they have no empathy.

*applauds Ceci for working her confusion*

Why.. what other "victims" are there in society? She did not specify, and .. knowing her post and her attitude rather well I know exactly where she will take this thread, though she will deny she meant "race differences" we all know better then that.

Just a game Gools, just a game. I am terribly sorry if you see it as "ignorant" for calling someone out, but I do believe on ATS we are to .. DENY ignorance.. and I believe I am doing just that by expressing my views on what I see as a rather poorly done attempt to mask her true intentions.

But hey. Thats just my opinion Gools. Call me ignorant if you want, I see it as truth. *shrugs*

With that in mind, please address any off-topic comments via the u2u function.

Mod Note: Please Stay on Topic

Sorry. I must have misplaced my glasses because I thought talking about the black "victim society" was very much so on topic. An aside from that, if I think that is her intention, then that is very much so within the bounds of the topic.

I am so... so sorry if I have offended any one with my blunt approach.

DTOM, I see where you're coming from. Tragedy has become a commodity. The media has “productized” disaster and packaged it up for us to “buy”. I think that probably makes it easier for some people to keep an emotional distance from the victims of misfortunes.

I also think that the overall feeling of a nation is dictated by its leadership’s ability to feel. And right now, not only does our country not have the money to take care of the Katrina victims (for example) but the leadership itself is not empathetic, regardless what they say in their speeches.

I still think most Americans are empathetic toward others. But I have to agree with Ceci that the government and other leaders in our country shape the nations feelings to a certain extent and therefore we might be in some trouble when it comes to the empathy in the future.

Originally posted by Gools

Originally posted by jsobecky
...just one more attempt to bring up the topic of "White Privilege".

Originally posted by Rockpuck
...this has to do with Whites not wanting to give you money for being Black. We all know you see your self as a victim of White behavior....

You know it's funny (in a sad pathetic way) that it's YOU GUYS who are bringing race into this discussion and not the other way around.

Do you even realise how stupid and ignorant that looks?

You are making leaps in logic and not even allowing the original poster to discuss anything but race because it is YOU who are bringing up the topic. And it's off-topic as far as I'm concerned in this post about empathy.

You two are the ones playing the race card here.

Back on topic!

.

OK, so forget that part. how about my other comments:

You folks have got to be kidding. Who in America has ever "encouraged others not to feel for victims"? Esp. when you're talking 9/11 and Katrina?

Americans are the most giving, caring nation on earth. We are the first to offer aid to anyone who needs it.

When have you ever heard anyone (Americans) encourage others not to feel for the victims of 9/11?

Although 9/11 is not the best example of an event where people lacked empathy (as a matter of fact, I became rather disgusted with the rest of society for the way that they became so touched by it that it was almost as if they were melodramatically trying to make themselves victims just so that they could be associated with an event of such global reprecussions), there were a few instances even there and in Katrina of certain segments of the American public who had already made the choice to dehumanize the groups most predominantly affected displaying their lack of compassion.

There was Ward Churchill, who called the victims of 9/11 "mini-eichmans" and suggested that they had made themselves legitimate targets by waging economic war on the rest of the world. He seemed to be rationalizing that they deserved to be attacked, which would imply that #1. He wasn't in danger. #2. He didn't have to make himself party to the subsequent war in any way.

I also recall a very popular feeling during Katrina among people I know personally, even some of my family, that the victims were responsible for their plight because they were all poor scum who had stayed behind explicitly for the chance to ransack an empty city (which made me wonder exactly how much looting those who were stuck in the hospitals had really planned to accomplish).


The only thing I really disagree with ceci on so far in this thread is the claim that this is related to ascendant authoritarianism organized around militarism. I don't think that you can nail a majority of those who refuse to show compassion down to any one ideology. Some are your standard heil der fuhrer military worshipers, others are insecure petit bourgeois fools who have to demean the poor to satisfy their sense of social status; "let them eat cake" makes some people feel important. Others still are just anti-social; society sometimes hurts us and we feel vindicated when bad things happen to society.

To say that America is moving towards militarism is to take the overly focused view that generally causes historical dialecticism to yield faulty projections. We may infact be moving towards militarism, particularly in certain segments of society (while we recoil from it even more intensely in other areas), however it seems in other segments that the struggle between meritocracy/social darwinism and what some would describe as socialism is paramount.

In so many (and so big) words, welcome to society. We're always fighting over/for something, not always the same something in every place at once, and we adopt views that vindicate us in that fight- but if someone is vindicated- somebody else must be losing. In simplest possible terms, people put eachother down.

In any population of 300 million, you're going to have a few Ward Churchills, but to extrapolate to include Americans in general is outrageous and insulting.

I am not extrapolating anything from ward churchill's behavior. I am using him as an example of how an established bit of psychology applies to the phenomenon at hand.
Edit to add:
If i had derived that bit of psychology from Churchill's behavior, then yes I'd be projecting the problems of one foolish man onto 300,000,000 people and that would be quite another matter.

[edit on 17-3-2007 by The Vagabond]

I didn't mean to imply that you were extrapolating, Vagabond.

My bad then, no biggie. I just felt it wouldn't be a good idea to let anybody here get the idea that I might see them as a pretentious old psuedo-intellectual nit like Ward Churchill.
There's only room for one demagogue around here, and he might have been here first, but I'm better at it. The man has to go.