Social Death

10/27/14

There most definitely is much about this book that is troubling. I mentioned something in class last week that I’d like to develop a little further here with some of Cacho’s examples. Last week, during our discussion on adoption, I spoke about my frustrations with the perpetual public discourse that expresses sympathy toward the children who live in impoverished or decimated parts of the world, but not toward their mothers: we bestow sympathy, we desire to ‘save the kids,’ but the suffering of the mother who gives up/loses her child is completely absent.  Worse yet, we do nothing to try to alter the social structures, the wars, the famine, or the destruction caused to or inflicted upon their native lands.

I have seen this in the schools many times over: the adults who work in the schools are extremely sympathetic regarding the circumstances of students because, as they often acknowledge, children have no control over their own lives and statuses. What this actually means, though, is that children are relinquished from being blamed for their scenarios only because they lack access to the foundation of the neoliberal ideology: ‘choice.’ So while the child may be spared (only temporarily, that is), the blame is instead deflected to the individual who society believes has full access to ‘choice:’ the parent. Similar to the adoption scenario above, sympathy is bestowed upon the child because of his choicelessness; the pains of the parent are ignored (if she’s even acknowledged) so she can take on the blame for her poor ‘choices;’ and society skirts the blame for its lack of humanity in devising its social structures.

See, in order for the dominant class to justify entitlement to its own status, the individuals have to believe that they have rightfully earned it. And, of course, in order to fully internalize this notion, privileged individuals must also wholeheartedly believe that freedom of opportunity not only exists for everyone, but that it is alive and well. Now, in order to make these two ideas solidify in one’s mind, it is necessary to seek out, isolate, and glorify the scarce examples that support this ideological stance. Most commonly, of course, these are the ‘boot strap’ stories of individualistic, self-redemption and upward mobility. On occasion, however, I come across perspectives where people are irate about the fact that an individual’s ‘right’ to meritocracy has been cut off. And what I see there is not actually the fact that the (often White) person is upset that another person experienced injustice; I more often hear that they are upset that they could not use a person’s experience to uphold the meritocratic claim.

Cacho describes several ways in which African Americans and Latina/o immigrants are pitted against each other in the media and in the ring of meritocracy. Take for instance the case where some African Americans were robbing undocumented immigrants in New Orleans. “It’s very sad…[the immigrants] work all week. Then comes the weekend, they get robbed” (p. 12). This is undoubtedly unfair. But, the sympathy seems to derive from the idea that the workers were doing ‘the right’ and meritocratic thing by working so hard to ‘better themselves.’ (Again, I’m not arguing against the wrongness of this act). The question, however, is whether the sympathizer’s reaction would be the same if the victims’ funds were not earned through backbreaking labor. What if the victims’ stolen funds were derived from public assistance or the second economy? Would the crime then be perceived as less tragic?

Another example is where she discusses the belief about the ‘ownership’ over civil rights and the history of the civil rights movement itself. As Cacho puts it, civil rights were spun into the “intellectual property” domain of African Americans by the media (p. 137). Again, notice that this is associated with the idea of ownership, as in it was earned and therefore ‘belongs’ to one group of people. So in contrast to the prior example where African Americans are stealing what rightfully belongs to Latina/o immigrants, in this case the Latina/o immigrants are taking what rightfully belongs to the African Americans. Sympathy is directed each time to whichever group was ‘choosing’ to ‘pull themselves up by their boot straps.’ And what is missing from the conversation altogether is the conversation about the social structures that actually prohibit both groups from being able to access the same privileges and ‘choices’ as the dominant class.

Because of the faith in meritocracy and how it upholds the hierarchy, crimes are not perceived as injustices done to the person. The perceived problem is instead that people were cut off from the meritocratic path, or that they had stolen what they had earned. And stories such as these delegitimize, disprove, and therefore compromise the stability of the faith of meritocracy. They shed light on the fact that meritocracy, upward mobility, and equal opportunity do not actually exist. Thus, through the eyes of the dominant class, such instances cannot be viewed as problematic simply because they are crimes against humanity. In reality, they express the belief that they are only problematic because they are crimes against meritocracy.