Rankism

What is rankism? First, some examples; then, a definition.

An executive pulls into valet parking, late to a business lunch, and finds no one to take his car. He spots a teenager running towards him and yells, “Where the hell were you? I haven’t got all day.”

He tosses the keys on the pavement. Bending to pick them up, the boy says, “Sorry, sir. About how long do you expect to be?”

The executive hollers over his shoulder, “You’ll know when you see me, won’t you?” The valet winces, but holds his tongue.

Postscript: That evening the teenager bullies his kid brother.

The dynamic is familiar: A customer demeans a waitress, a boss humiliates an employee, a principal bullies a teacher, a teacher mocks a student, students ostracize other students, a parent beats a child, a coach bullies a player, a professor exploits a graduate student, a doctor insults a nurse or patronizes a patient, a priest abuses a parishioner, a caregiver mistreats an elder, executives award themselves perks and bonuses, police use racial profiling, politicians serve the special interests. Surely, you can add to the list.

Most such behaviors have nothing to do with racism, sexism, or other discriminatory isms. Yet perpetrators of these insults, like racists and sexists, select their targets with circumspection. In every case, a disparity of power and rank figures in the choice of target and higher rank shields perpetrators from retaliation.

Rank signifies power. Sometimes rank is abused, as in these examples, but often it’s simply an organizational tool used to get a job done in a timely manner. Many bosses, coaches, doctors, priests, and professors interact with their subordinates without insulting or exploiting them. Yet in the hands of a sadistic bully, rank is a cudgel if not an instrument of torture. What can victims of rank abuse do to protect their dignity?

Those abused on the basis of color unified against racism. Women targeted sexism and the elderly took aim at ageism. By analogy, “rankism” denotes abuses of power associated with rank. Once you have a name for it, you see it everywhere. More importantly, once you call it by name, everyone else will see it too, and perpetrators will find themselves on the defensive.

“To have a name is to be,” said Benoit Mandelbrot, the inventor of fractals. As “sexism” gained a foothold, men’s desire to avoid being labeled “sexist” caused them to modify their treatment of women. Likewise, the desire of perpetrators to avoid being labeled rankist will make them think twice about insulting the dignity of subordinates.

Rankism is what people who take themselves for “somebodies” do to those they mistake for “nobodies.” Whether directed at an individual or a group, rankism aims to put targets in their place and keep them weak so they will do as they’re told and submit to being taken advantage of.

In the examples above, rankism consists of abuse of the power attached to rank. Another expression of rankism occurs when the abuse lies not in how rank is used, but in the very fact of ranking in the first place. There are lots of hierarchies whose only purpose is to justify privileging one group over another. Then, high status is used by the creators of these fabricated hierarchies to rationalize the privileges they’ve arrogated unto themselves. Contrariwise, the inferior status of the less powerful is invoked to justify their on-going exploitation. The irony is that while the less powerful are forced to serve as benefactors to those of higher rank, they are routinely depicted as dependent and inferior.

Examples of rankism based on pseudo rankings include the illicit hierarchies maintained by racism, sexism, ageism, classism, ableism, and heterosexualism (or, homophobia)--in short, the familiar isms that plague societies and that, one by one, are being discredited and dismantled.

Like abuses of legitimate rank, the use of illegitimate rank is a source of humiliation and indignity. Both expressions of rankism are indefensible violations of human dignity. Rankism is simply an umbrella name for the many ways that people put others down to secure advantages for themselves. All forms of rankism have their roots in predation and have evolved from the practice of slavery.

The relationship between rankism and the specific isms targeted by identity politics can be compared to that between cancer and its subspecies. For centuries the group of diseases that are now seen as varieties of cancer were regarded as distinct illnesses. No one realized that lung, breast, and other organ-specific cancers all had their origins in cellular malfunction.

In this metaphor, racism, sexism, and homophobia are analogous to organ-specific cancers and rankism is the blanket malignancy analogous to cancer itself. Rankism is the mother of all the ignoble isms.

Now that rankism has a name, we must learn to say it aloud. It was not easy to use the word “sexism” at first. Men utterly refused, and women demurred for fear of seeming “uppity.” As we overcome our reluctance to be uppity nobodies, and gain the confidence to stand up for our own and others’ dignity, rankism will become insupportable.

The demise of rankism in all its guises will mark the dawn of something new in human affairs--dignitarian societies. In a dignitarian society, no one is taken for a nobody and, regardless of role or rank, everyone is accorded equal dignity.

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A few additional thoughts on rankism:
 
Photos of the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by their guards gave the entire world a look at rankism’s arrogant face. Hurricane Katrina made visible its most common victims. The wealthy and connected got out of New Orleans ahead of time. The poor, the sick, prisoners, the elderly, and those lacking a means of transportation were trapped by nature’s fury and then left to cope on their own during days of inaction by government officials and agencies.

In addition to its universality, rankism differs from the familiar trait-based abuses because rank is not fixed the way race and gender generally are, but rather changes depending on the context. For instance, someone can hold high rank in one setting (e.g., at home) and simultaneously be low on the totem pole in another (at work). Likewise, we can feel powerful at one time and powerless at another, as when we move from childhood to adulthood and then from our “prime” into old age, or when we experience the loss of a job, a partner, or our health. As a result, most of us have been both victims and perpetrators of discrimination based on rank.

Diminishing returns and outright backlash are threatening the hard-won gains of the firmly established civil rights and women’s movements as well as the movements for gay rights and for people with disabilities. The divisiveness inherent in identity politics suggests that to complete the eradication of the familiar isms, we will have to include everyone—somebodies and nobodies alike—and redirect our attack to the rankism that afflicts us all. Furthermore, why should black on black, female on female, white on white, or gay on gay abuses and discrimination get a pass? One cannot touch these abuses by framing the problem in terms of one of the familiar isms. The above categories of abuse are not involved because they do not cross a color, gender or sexual orientation divide.

Rank and rankism are often confused, and differentiating them is crucial. Unless rank is inherently illegitimate—as are for example, the social rankings that have made second-class citizens of various identity groups—then the problem is not with rank per se but rather the abuse of rank. This distinction goes to the heart of many of the most vexing issues that arise in our personal lives, society, and national politics.

The confusion occurs because rank is so commonly misused that many people mistakenly conclude the only remedy is to abolish it. This makes about as much sense as attempting to solve racial problems by doing away with all races but one, or addressing gender issues by eliminating one gender. Ignoring differences in aptitude, ability, and performance and attempting to eradicate the differences of rank which reflect them has repeatedly failed those who have tried it. “Levelers” in seventeenth-century Britain, Socialists in nineteenth-century Europe, and Communists of the twentieth century all disappointed their supporters. And when egalitarian ideologies did prevail, those leaderships typically imposed even worse tyrannies than the ones they replaced.

Abolishing distinctions of rank that facilitate cooperation can also weaken a society to the point that it becomes vulnerable to existing enemies or invites new ones. History suggests that political and social models that try to do away with rank altogether are naïvely utopian and that societies that adopt them court catastrophe. As the nineteenth-century French statesman Chateaubriand noted, “Equality and despotism have secret connections.”

We rightfully admire and love authorities—parents, teachers, bosses, political leaders—who hold their rank and use the power that comes with it in an exemplary way. Accepting their leadership entails no loss of self-respect or opportunity on the part of subordinates. It is when people abuse their power to demean or disadvantage those they outrank that seeds of indignity are sown. Over time, indignity turns to indignation and smarting victims may be left thirsting for vengeance. The consequences can range from relatively benign foot-dragging all the way to genocide.