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Show Chapter XI. Xenophobia and Moral Anomaly 448 responses to them.6 For instance, he may ignore or fail to acknowledge a disvaluee's contribution to a general discussion, or respond to that contribution as though someone else had made it. Or he may relegate a disvaluee to marginal or peripheral tasks in a professional setting. Or he may simply ignore the disvaluee altogether, avoiding all social interaction not strictly required by social or institutional obligations. In behaving in this fashion, the higher-order political discriminator does not give vent to any sort of malevolent impulse. His aim is not to insult or injure the disvaluee. Rather, his aim is to avoid the painfully conflicting feelings - of disgust or contempt on the one hand, and the pangs of conscience on the other - that acknowledgement of the disvaluee provokes.7 Denial of a person's presence as a way of avoiding conflicting feelings about them is fairly common. A very handsome man may be the object of denial, when others' feelings of attraction to him conflict with their conviction that these feelings are inappropriate; a very fortunate or charismatic person may be the object of denial, when others' feelings of envy or resentment conflict with a similar conviction. Or a homely person may be the object of denial when others' feelings of repugnance conflict with their kindness or social good will. Higher-order political discrimination is most analogous to this last-described case. When social or institutional obligations make denial of the disvaluee's presence impossible, denial of (at the very least) her primary disvalued property, and of its perceived disvalue, supplies a second-best resolution to this conflict of conscience: Denial of the disvaluee's primary disvalued property suppresses from awareness the discriminatory habits of thought elicited by it, hence similarly preserves horizontal and vertical consistency over time, by placating the requirements of conscience. Thus the higher-order political discriminator is guilty of an even greater failure of cognitive discrimination than that of the simple first-order political discriminator. For whereas the latter fails merely to perceive the disvaluee's personhood through her difference, the latter fails to perceive either her or her difference at all. This is why the higher-order political discriminator tends to suppress (B.4). This may contribute to an explanation of the phenomenon, noted by Schuman, Steeh, and Bobo (Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), that in the preceding twenty years, white support for the principles of equality and fairness for blacks had increased, concurrently with white opposition to the implementation of those principles. 7 Here the joke characterizing the difference between first-order racism in the American South and North is relevant: In the South, it is said, whites don't mind how close a black person gets, as long as he doesn't get too big; whereas in the North, whites don't mind how big a black person gets, as long as he doesn't get too close. Only the higher-order political discriminator of either region is compelled to deny the existence of the black person altogether. 6 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
