From Cardinal Cañizares to Donald Trump to Brexit: The Objective of Othering.

“Social identities are relational; groups typically define themselves in relation to others. This is because identity has little meaning without the “other”. So, by defining itself a group defines others. Identity is rarely claimed or assigned for its own sake. These definitions of self and others have purposes and consequences. They are tied to rewards and punishment, which may be material or symbolic. There is usually an expectation of gain or loss as a consequence of identity claims. This is why identities are contested. Power is implicated here, and because groups do not have equal powers to define both self and the other, the consequences reflect these power differentials. Often notions of superiority and inferiority are embedded in particular identities.” Andrew Okolie

Interesting isn’t it? Incredibly important in the current socio-political climate. I thought it was worth posting because of a comment on the Cardinal Cañizares post:

“I suspect Canizares was formed by standard Catholic moral theology which teaches that some acts are always objectively sinful, but which has never taught that some persons are inherently evil. The accusation that the church teaches that “gays are evil” is caricature…”

That places the Cardinal’s statements in a vacuum. There’s no before, no after, no consequences. Except that’s not how logical progression works. When a speech, article or rhetoric are being devised- it’s with an objective in mind. A means to an end.

A good example is the history of attempts to establish race/intelligence correlations. This has always been done in the context of establishing a social/racial hierarchy. In Galton’s Hereditary Genius (1869) he said that ancient Attic Greeks had been the people with the highest average intelligence, followed by contemporary Englishmen, with black Africans at a lower level, and Australian Aborigines lower still. Half a century later, George O. Ferguson wrote a thesis called The Psychology of the Negro (1916) in which he claimed people of African origin were “poor in abstract thought, but good in physical responses.” That same year the manual for the Stanford-Binet scale took the logical progression forward by stating: enormously significant racial differences in general intelligence could not be remedied by education.

And that is why there was such controversy after the publication of The Bell Curve- I’ll let you all mull on that before I continue tomorrow. Pregnant pause. But be warned I’ve got five skewers in each hand to take apart othering and I’m going to lay them all out.