The errors of the oppressed

Nick Cohen makes an important point here – that the oppressed are not necessarily more virtuous than others. I want to expand upon this. There are several mechanisms that might cause this.

One, which is most relevant to Nick’s argument, is that oppression often produces stress and anxiety, which in turn can produce self-obsession and narrow-mindedness – just as hypochondriacs are bores to be around because they are forever fretting about their ailments. In his lovely book, The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, Ben Friedman shows how for this reason bad economic times lead to upturns in intolerance and racism. Some bien-pensants are quick to accuse the white working class of being racist – but if that oppressed group can have reactionary or self-centred attitudes, why can’t others?

There are three other mechanisms here:

 - Ego-depletion. If it’s a struggle to just get by, you’ll have fewer intellectual resources with which to consider other problems. Researchers at Princeton have shown that, for this reason, the poor tend to have a lower IQ than the rich. But I wonder: might the same be true for people struggling with other oppressions such as racism or sexism?

 - Adaptive preferences. One notable fact about many of the oppressed is that they are so damned quiet about it. This is because they resign themselves to their fate. As Amartya Sen has written:

Deprived people tend to come to terms with their deprivation because of the sheer necessity of survival, and they may, as a result, lack the courage to demand any radical change, and may even adjust their desires and expectations to what they unambitiously see as feasible (Development as Freedom)

 - Ideology. Several well-known cognitive biases – such as the anchoring heuristic, status quo bias or just world illusion - can combine to produce an acceptance of inequality and injustice; see, for example, John Jost’s system justification theory (pdf).

All of this suggest that oppressed groups need not have an accurate opinion of injustice. Many might not see themselves as oppressed, and those that do might lash out at the wrong targets – be it taking offense at silly racist talk rather than structural racism or blaming immigrants for low wages rather than various forces within capitalism.

It is of course true that one of the great problems for Marxism has been that the working class has not developed the class consciousness that Marx hoped for. But why should other oppressed groups fare any better?

Now, this is NOT to say that such groups should not be heard and should instead be represented by wiser heads such as um, well white male PPE graduates. For one thing, the more privileged have weaker incentives to fight inequality. And for another, they/we too are also prone to cognitive biases: one of the sillier if unintended implications of the “nudge” agenda has been the idea that rulers are free of cognitive error.

Instead, we much distinguish sharply between two questions: “what do you think?” and “what do you know?” It’s the latter that matters. For example, the everyday sexism project has awakened me to the troubles that women face far more than windy feminist theory has done.

Which brings me to the problem. The institutions that might give voice to the lives of the most oppressed – the poor both here and globally; women and gays in backward communities and so on – are to say the least under-developed. One of the symptoms of genuine oppression is that one’s voice is not heard. When this absence is combined with the lack of mechanisms to counter false consciousness, it is small wonder that injustice is perpetuated.

Comments

[Jacques René Giguère]

One interesting thing about the Everyday sexism project is that the canadian site is in english only. Francophone women won't be heard...

[BCFG]

"Nick Cohen makes an important point here – that the oppressed are not necessarily more virtuous than others."

Not only is this not an important point it is also an irrelevant point.

Of course what is missing from this article and Nick Cohen's entire output is an analysis of what constitutes self-obsession and narrow-mindedness and where is the factual evidence to back up this wild assertion. And where is the link between oppression and narrow mindedness.

The danger with this approach is that you insert your own subjective idea into the argument.

For example during the Algerian struggle for independence against liberally enlightened France the Algerian's used Islam as a weapon to discipline the resistance, i.e. they clamped down on alcohol abuse etc. In Northern Ireland the IRA had to dish out punish beatings as part of the struggle. It what a disciplined resistance has to do.

But Nick Cohen, I suspect, will often erroneously interpret these things as a sign of lack of virtuousness.

Seriously what does Nick Cohen know about the struggles of the oppressed. That might be a better article.

I suspect your virulent anti Palestinian racism motivated you to write this article.

[Matt Moore]

'The institutions that might give voice to the lives of the most oppressed – the poor both here and globally; women and gays in backward communities and so on – are to say the least under-developed.'

Which is why we hear a lot in the media about elite sexism (glass ceiling) and less about mass sexism (domestic violence)

[Dave Timoney]

The problem with the sharp distinction between “what do you think?” and “what do you know?” is that the value of the latter is prioritised and its interpretation easily detached. In other words, "experts" (often white male PPE grads) decide they are better equipped to translate the data of the oppressed into meaningful action.

This is the same elitist delusion that lies behind the concept of "Big Data": there is a truth that is accessible only to those able to stand outside the dataset (one thing "windy feminist theory" has going for it is that it is often written by women). As JRG noted above, this will entail other biases.

[Pro Cynic]

A defence of IRA punishment beatings? Wow.

[Blissex]

«the working class has not developed the class consciousness that Marx hoped for»

Alternatively many or most of them have become, via small property holdings, petty rentiers, thus they have developed a strong class consciousness as petty rentiers, and vote ruthlessly for lower wages and benefits for the "parasitical" working class and higher rents and capital gains for the "deserving" rentier class.

Perhaps their class consciousness as petty rentiers is a false consciousness and all things considered they should regard themselves primarily working class, but there is a good argument that I have often mentioned that their rentier class consciousness is in large part well founded.

Usual quote from a post on ConservativeHome:

«It was indeed at the diffusion of property that inter-war Tories aimed, as the pragmatic answer to the arrival of democracy and the challenge from Labour. There were even prophetic council house sales by local Tories in the drive to create voters with a Conservative political mentality.
As a Tory councillor in Leeds defiantly told Labour opponents in 1926, ‘it is a good thing for people to buy their own houses. They turn Tory directly. We shall go on making Tories and you will be wiped out.’ There is much of the Party history of the twentieth century in that remark.»

[Ralph Musgrave]

Chris mentions racism five times in his article and BCFG accuses Chris of racism. Love it!

I’d just like to say that I’m far holier and less racist than anyone who comments on this blog. That makes me feel good.

I also think that anyone who mentions racism more than 500 times a day should be shot. That would cut the population by a good 10% and reduce carbon dioxide emissions substantially.