Scapegoating

Scapegoating is an age-old practice, well-tested as an expression of Anti-Jewish oppression, that finds a convenient group or individual to blame for current difficulties or troubles. Today, scapegoating provides the foundation for modern-day discourse against newcomers, foreigners and immigrants throughout the world. The widely accepted and largely unchallenged practice of scapegoating has also seeped into our organizations and personal relationships. You can see this when an organization emphasizes a “problem person” who needs to be “fixed’ or gotten rid of, as if this will magically make the the difficulty go away. How easy it would be if this were true, but it rarely, if ever, is. However much we’d like to pinpoint a specific individual (or group) as the problem, we cannot deny they are part of a larger system which encourages, through reward or fear, the very behaviors we wish to eradicate.

Ignoring or Minimizing the Context

Removing or attempting to “fix” a group or individual is misguided at best and perpetuates oppressive, punitive, fear-producing behavior at worst. Any one individual or group of people is never the problem. Whether in an organization, a personal relationship, or society as a whole, blame either minimizes or denies the full context in which any individual or group is shaped and encouraged to act. Even if the behavior is one that must be interrupted or stopped because it is inappropriate, we can do so more effectively with an understanding of the context which co-created their response. When we acknowledge and seek to understand the full extent of the external factors impacting this group or individual, we can intervene in a more appropriate way that addresses the root causes of the problem behavior.

For example, a department manager was consistently late to work and struggled to get to meetings on time. He was disorganized and lacked focus. His team felt that he was unable to provide the support they needed and that his behavior was unprofessional, reflecting poorly on the department as a whole. The solution the team came up with was to get rid of him. Any difficulties the team was experiencing were scapegoated on the leader. Yes, the leader did arrive very late to work on most days–and also stayed well into the night most evenings. Chronic insomnia along with other medical conditions made it physically impossible for him to start his work day earlier. It also turned out he was managing his department without any administrative support. Given the high visibility of his programs throughout the organization, he was completely overwhelmed handling it on his own. Without this crucial support, his pre-existing difficulties with promptness and focus were exacerbated and became an obvious target for scapegoating. Upon further inquiry, it became evident that more than the leader’s actions were contributing to the challenges in the department. Gossip, sabotage and other attack tactics common in the team’s dynamics not only undermined the leader but also the entire team’s effectiveness. While the leader certainly needed to make changes in his behavior, as long as the team could blame the leader, they didn’t have to examine how their own behaviors and attitudes co-created this outcome.

Avoiding Our Own Responsibility

When we blame others we make ourselves powerless. In the blame paradigm we give power away to another individual or group, making them “wrong”–and making ourselves victims at the same time. I use the word “victim” very intentionally yet with great caution because of how it has been misused to target people for their own difficulties. The scapegoating phenomenon makes the target of blame the “perpetrator” in this dynamic, which, by default, creates a “victim.” These two roles co-create the dynamic–even as we may want to deny or fight against such labels.

By acknowledging the ways our own behaviors and attitudes contribute to the situation we want to change, we can have more influence on the situation. We do this by altering the only aspect we have any real control over–ourselves. The need to find and assign blame keeps us hooked into the dynamic. Without the distraction of blame, we can more flexibly impact the situation with both confidence and compassion.

Blamelessness

Do I blame others? Absolutely. I fall into the trap of needing to make others wrong, especially when I feel powerless to influence change. Yet, when I can reach for a perspective that refuses to find fault–against someone else or against myself–I reclaim my own power to effect change. I hold the individual or group accountable while acknowledging my own contribution to the situation–with compassion for both of us. As I address and shift my part of the dynamic, the change I couldn’t before imagine as possible becomes real.

By refusing to find fault, I stand firmly against patterns rooted in Anti-Jewish oppression and also against injustices which seeks to target any group or individual as “the problem.” No one is the “problem.”The problem is rooted in larger societal contexts of structural inequalities and injustices. The problem requires us to work together to create solutions. It’s more than likely that the person or group we feel compelled to scapegoat is actually the perfect ally with whom to solve that problem.

Who do you scapegoat in your life? Where do you see blaming behaviors go unchallenged in your personal relationships? Your organization? Society? What would shift for you if you decided to embrace a “blamelessness” policy? I look forward to reading your comments on our blog, Facebook page or Twitter feed. Feel free to share this article to broaden the conversation!

“Humans are made for collaborating,” the authors write, “Yet over time, humans created so many conveniences that we can now survive without each other.” I would offer that this is not the case in most parts of the world and certainly not in working class and poor communities in the economic North where survival is still very much linked to relationships and collaborations with other humans in strong clan, tribal, family or community networks. Nonetheless, for those of us with access to economic resources, their point is well-taken: we have “advanced” ourselves into isolation.

The first element of a strong collaboration, and the focus of this first book blog, is complementary strengths.  The authors debunk the myth of the “polymath”–a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas, otherwise known as the “Renaissance Man.”  This is a pervasive notion and supports the strong US emphasis on individualism, individual accomplishment and the Hero story.  Wagner and Muller write, “Few ideas so widely accepted are so demonstrably wrong [as the 'polymath.']“  Yet shoring up this myth reinforces values and beliefs that are not only deeply held and defended but also structurally supported and institutionally enforced by dominant culture in the US.

According to the Power of 2, in order to develop strong partnerships in life or at work, we would need to accept that while excellent in some areas we are also limited in others–the way any person’s skills and expertise are partial to the experiences, training and education they have received.  As they write, “So admit it: You stink at some things. You have blind spots, weaknesses….  Your strengths are stronger and your weaknesses weaker than you realize. You need help. You are also precisely the help someone else needs.” And this is why they make the case for true collaborators to actively seek a partner who is different from us.  In other words, we all need diversity to perform at our best.

I recently asked a client who has a very homogeneous workforce of largely white men if he thought it was a problem that his department lacked diversity. He thought about if for a while and then said, “No.”  He argued that they were still able to do excellent work, despite the lack of employees with different strengths or ways of thinking. Therefore, he concluded, no problem.  Wagner and Muller would disagree on the level of individual collaboration, contribution and excellence. “It’s a fallacy that…[you] alone will be anywhere as powerful as the two combined.” And I would also disagree, and even extend their argument to support the importance of having a diverse workplace.  It is also a fallacy, in my view, for any one group to imagine themselves to be as powerful, excellent, brilliant, or cutting-edge as two (or more) different groups collaborating and working together.

Wagner and Muller caution that seeking and acknowledging complimentary strengths means seeing your partner’s contribution of equal value to your own. In other words: ego and dominance must be checked at the door.  This is an important, yet difficult, diversity lesson when the groups we belong to (men, white, able-bodied, heterosexual, Christian, etc.) are in the position of dominance because of institutional validation for our way of thinking and acting.  It’s easy to get caught up into believing our complimentary strength really is the “better” strength in the partnership–and they wouldn’t make it without us.  According to Wagner and Muller, they wouldn’t. But neither would we.  It’s the interdependency of the complimentary strengths that allows each contributor in the partnership to shine. Therefore, to encourage true equity and peerness of both sets of strengths in any partnership, in other words to see them equally important, individuals and organizations will have to both closely examine and interrupt policies and attitudes that would seek to promote one strength over another. Failing to acknowledge that the partnership’s success is based in the diversity of the partnership itself will continue to invalidate and undermine true collaboration.

What are the strengths you bring to a collaborative partnership? What are your weaknesses?  Who would you need to seek out as a partner to compliment your strengths? What stops you?  How will you check your ego and dominance so that it doesn’t interfere with the partnership? Or conversely, how will you interrupt attempting to “adapt” yourself to mimic the dominant strengths you see around you at work and instead assert the value of what your bring as complimentary and essential to any successful collaboration?  How will you interrupt organizational dominance to ensure complimentary strengths are recognized, rewarded, and sought after?

By the end of June you can pick up a copy of this book or audio book through our website resources page (15% of all purchases are donated to a non-profit) or follow along using the audio podcasts adapted for the book.  Click here for the link to this chapter or here for a list of all the adapted podcast chapters.  Read (or listen) along with us and share you comments on this book blog!

“Hello, Nanci. Thanks so much for the pictures and great article. I really took it to heart. Since the training the biggest difference I’m noticing is that people are talking about things. It’s not always nice stuff. Sometimes it’s expressing feeling hurt by a supervisor’s treatment or the way someone addressed them. Instead of just stuffing things under the rug people are opening up and talking a lot more. The break room is just louder and more vibrant. It seems like people have held back a lot of hurt feelings over the years and now feel like they can talk about them. It’s very different with all these new voices of people who used to be pretty silent. Thank you so much.”

Having more authentic conversations, even though they bring up thoughts and feelings that can be hard to hear or challenging to have, are a sign of success. Sometimes organizations are confused by this turn of events. Organizations assume that if no one’s talking about these issues, then everything is going fine. Quite the contrary–if you create enough safety, more and more conversations will happen, and more issues will come into the light; the silences are be broken. And that is a good thing. The question: do you have the organizational capacity to handle these conversations? Skills building for effective conversations as well as a framework with which to “hold” them is essential if the organization and individuals will move through them, toward true alliances and cultural competency.

This year the focus is on racism and sports. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated, “We must push for all sports organizations to adopt stringent anti-discrimination policies, as well as frameworks for punishing the perpetrators of racist incidents and justice for the victims [both inside and outside of the stadium].” The sports industry, like any institution, has perpetuated institutional racism and is used to reinforce “race-based” prejudices (often in the guise of nationalism in international sporting events). A brilliant example of how sports can be used to structurally and emotionally interrupt racist divisions, can be seen in the 2009 film Invictus.  This film tells the inspiring true story of how newly-elected President Nelson Mandela seeks to unite his still racially and economically divided country in the wake of apartheid by joining forces with Francois Pienaar, captain of South Africa’s rugby team, the Springboks, as they make their historic run to the 1995 Rugby World Cup Championship match.

Marking this day in the US, over 700 organizations from across the country are supporting the “March for America” campaign. Thousands are expected to march at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, March 21st to demand immigration reform. For more information about the march visit Reform Immigration For America.

You can find more information about the international call to action at Human Rights Education Associate.  Some tools featured on this site that you can use to bring about an end to racism include learning activities for use with young people to explore the issue of discrimination, developed by Amnesty International; the international basis for intercultural education including anti-racist and human rights education, to increase awareness and use of international human rights treaties to shape international human rights standards into reality; and anti-slavery fact sheets, that present simple, easy-to-use information on past slavery, present-day slavery and bonded labor.

With provocative chapter titles such as “I’m Not White” and “I’m Not A Racist,” Kivel engages his readers and acknowledges the social context that makes people shy away from identifying as “white.”  He validates that for many of his readers, there is a strong desire to individualize their identities and distance themselves from the associations that come with that label. He goes on to illuminate how the tendency to focus solely on personal prejudice can impede efforts to dismantle racism in the greater context: the “institutional nature of [centuries of white racism] is more entrenched than racial prejudice. In fact, it is barely touched by changes in individual white consciousness.”

While shifts in individual white consciousness are necessary for racial justice, Kivel also provides strategies and suggestions to take the next steps towards combating institutional racism. He explores initiatives such as Affirmative Action, redistribution of economic resources, investment in communities of color, and supporting democratic, anti-racist multiculturalism. The revised edition includes an updated bibliography and the more current topics of anti-Arab prejudice and how the U.S.’s health care system perpetuates racial inequalities—an especially timely issue.

This book is an engaging guide to identifying the social, political, and economic context in which institutional racism is grounded. Subscribe to the LJS blog feed to read more reflections about this book. We hope you’ll add your voice to the discussion!

Johnson’s conversational writing style works to diffuse defensiveness while inviting readers to think critically about issues such as “white privilege,” “dominance,” “patriarchy,” “heterosexism,” and “racism.” Normally diversity conversations are more coded and less direct because simply using these words can “turn off” privileged groups from even addressing the issues. Johnson argues, “we have to reclaim some difficult …, language that has been so misused and maligned that it generates more heat than light.  We can’t just stop using words like racism, sexism and privilege, however, because these are tools that focus our awareness on the problem and all the forms it takes.  Once we can see and talk about what’s going on, we can analyze how it works as a system.  We can identify points of leverage where change can begin.”

Johnson educates his readers about the difference between individuals who may or may not “feel” privileged and how people in social categories are awarded privilege and power by the very nature of one’s participation in the system—regardless of if they can “feel” it.  He challenges us to interrupt this system of dominance by breaking our silence around privilege. He writes about our ability to choose a “path of greater resistance” that questions the assumptions that keep power and privilege in place.

For those of you working to implement organizational change, pay close attention to pages 67-70.  Johnson addresses some of the pitfalls of implementing organizational diversity initiatives built upon the “tin cup approach” and the “business case.” He writes, “Perhaps more than any other factor, this reluctance to come to terms with more serious and entrenched forms of [power and the unequal distribution of resources and rewards] is why most diversity programs produce limited and short-lived results.”

The final chapter outlines some clear actions we can take to transform our relationship to privilege. As Johnson states, “We are not prisoners to some natural order that pits us hopelessly and endlessly against one another.” This book offers us a framework for engaging in authentic and healing conversations about privilege and its contribution to systems of inequality.

My dad’s favorite meal is shrimp fried rice. I’ve always wondered why.  So one evening last week, when I took him out for Chinese food and he ordered his favorite dish, I asked him about the first time he had shrimp fried rice.  It was in Chicago in 1950.

On June 4th of that year he had traveled in a World War II bomber converted to passenger travel for Eastern Airlines’ flights from San Juan, Puerto Rico to New York. The red-eye flight took 7 hours.  My dad was strapped into the side of the plane and all he can remember is the noise of the engines.  To this day, he can’t stand that sound and he really doesn’t like to fly.

From New York, a popular final destination for Puerto Ricans at that time, my father continued onto Ypsilanti, Michigan—the closest airport at the time to Detroit, where his two older brothers, Carmelo and Abraham, were already working and living.  They rented rooms in a boarding house across from what is now Tiger Stadium but what used to be called Brigg’s Stadium.  The boarding house was run by a Maltese couple.  The husband, John Feliz, worked at the Ford plant and directed my dad there for employment.

My dad worked on the assembly line installing shiny, chrome bumpers on the 1952 Model T. The air was rank with fumes from the production and he never saw another live thing, except humans. And then there was the noise.  Kind of like a converted World War II bomber airplane.  The Ford plant was a world away from the countryside of rural Puerto Rico, abundant in lush green foliage, fruit trees that burst with the weight of their harvest, chickens eagerly feasting on scraps and bugs, and a chorus of birds and frogs provide the soundtrack. My dad didn’t last two months.

He began selling magazines door-to-door.  He didn’t speak much English. What English he knew he learned during his four years of schooling at the public (free) school in Aguada.  The magazine company decided to move my father to Chicago to sell magazines there.  A business decision that makes me seriously question the judgment of whatever person made that call.

My dad loves people and makes friends everywhere. Really, I mean that. Everywhere.  He connects with anyone, gets people to laugh, plays with people (despite themselves sometimes) and can put most anyone at ease.  Even when they don’t really want to notice or are able to reciprocate, he persists in showing them he likes them and it magically works.  But he’s really not into selling things.  He never really “got” the whole capitalism thing, if you know what I mean. When he and my mom were first married he had a job driving an ice cream truck.  My mom made him quit after more than one paycheck went directly back to the company that owned the truck—my dad owed more than he earned because he would give away the ice cream to all the children who couldn’t afford it (and maybe even to some of them who could!)

Needless to say, he found himself in Chicago, without either of his brothers and without a job in short order. He connected with some cousins who worked at the Hilton in Chicago and roomed with them for a bit. They eventually got him a job in banquets.  Apparently this was Puerto Rican turf.  Many immigrant groups carve out certain industries or areas and get other members of their group employment. It’s more important who you know than what you know.

The first winter my father ever experienced that wasn’t a tropical winter was in Chicago. He still remembers seeing his first snow.  And he still remembers the bitter cold, a chill and a dampness that entered his bones barely covered by a light jacket because, of course, this jíbaro had no winter coat to speak of.  He became ill with bronchitis.  His cousins took him in a taxi to the hospital to get him treatment but then he was pretty much on his own.  Lonely, jobless, sick and alone in this strange and cold city he called his brother, Carmelo, who everyone calls “Pito,” for help.

In the middle of that mid-west winter Pito and his new bride Sally drove from Detroit to Chicago. As my father puts it, “Pito never had a new car.” What struggling immigrant ever does?  The car had no heat but made it to Chicago.  My ill, now-18 year old father was laid in the back seat and covered with whatever extra clothing there was and the trio headed back to Detroit.  About halfway there, the car broke down.  None of them had money to fix it. And now they had no way to get home.

Pito called his Mexican father-in-law, Mr. Garza (my dad still calls him that–the respect for this elder etched in his now almost 80 year-old mind). Mr. Garza drove from Detroit to collect his daughter, new son-in-law and ill brother of his son-in-law somewhere along pre-Interstate route to Chicago.

My father had a gold watch. It was the only thing of any value (except the car that needed fixing) that any of the three of them had.  My father left it with the mechanic and asked him to fix the car with that gold watch as collateral.  He promised they would return for the repaired car with money for payment.  And eventually they did.

At some point in those few weeks of that Chicago winter when my father was looking for something warm to eat, he stumbled across a Chinese restaurant.  Immigrants find each other. It’s just one of those things.  He ordered shrimp fried rice.  And it always stayed his favorite meal after that.