How The Culture Of Victimhood Stifles Conversation

A presidential candidate gives a town hall meeting and during the Q&A session, a black elderly woman expresses concern over police brutality towards black folks, especially young black males. The presidential candidate is an older white man. While expressing her concern, she says thousands of black men are killed every day in this country and asks the presidential candidate what he plans to do about it. This puts the old white guy, as one could imagine, in a tough spot.

Of course, thousands of black men are not killed every day by police in the United States. But the candidate, knowing full well of the optics, decides not to correct the woman. After all, he does get her point broadly speaking, even if her statistics are way off. But to correct her would feel defensive, and perhaps campaign suicide. To correct her might even be to accuse her of exaggerating. In any case, hypothetically, it could appear rude.

The presidential candidate may consider the optics of a white man, correcting a black elderly woman, to be too grotesque for our narratives. In the hyper-aware climate of social hierarchy, we know who the victim is here, and to correct her would be rude. It would be punching down. Any pushback that deflates her premise, even in an attempt to alleviate some of her concerns, would best be avoided. (Did you notice that even in this hypothetical it feels like I am picking on elderly black women?)

The elderly woman is scared, and concerned about her grandchildren. Her fear is understood, but the information that fear is born out of is incorrect, nonetheless.

However, making that number falsely bigger (even just in hyperbole or honest mistake) serves no purpose other than to increase people’s paranoia with information that is not faithful to reality. As a consequence, many people have their logical concerns about hyperbole, rhetoric, and exaggerated numbers, and otherwise valuable data/information goes unnoticed. The president and the crowd both move on…

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But why? Wouldn’t the correct statistics be good news to many? Wouldn’t she enjoy the news that the death rate she is referring to is actually much lower? Well, sometimes not. Even hard statistics don’t sway emotions necessarily. Her truth, as they say, is her truth.

What phenomenon am I describing here? To what length do we accept a victim their own truth? At what length do we encourage victims to air out their grievances untouched by the nuance and nuisance of reality?

If we ought not to blame the victim, question the victim, or correct the victim, at what point does their line of logic, and their thought process stray from reality? Is it healthy for a society to let the stories, the narratives, and the perceived threats by perceived victims go completely unchecked, to encourage the victim, albeit rhetorically, to live in their own world?

I would submit, the consequences are disastrous. If you engage in any social media, you’ll notice the airing out of grievances proudly, sparing no detail. There are many woeful articles based on personal lived experiences that lie over the political views of the author so perfectly, it feels like fixed transparency. 

I’ve read many articles illustrating an act of racism the writer has encountered. It is very rare that men in white robes are up to no good, or bank managers use slurs — these bad things happen, but they are rare. The incident is almost always focused on a microaggression, a concept that certain parts of society are transfixed by, something like:

“The white lady at Target didn’t look me in the eye when she gave back my change.”

But inside the victim mentality, by virtue of their own determination to find it, they were absolutely sure it was racism. And how could it not be — it's everywhere — and then up go the placards and apologies from, you guessed it, mostly white ladies in the comment section.

What happens when the victim is immune from critique? What happens when the victim’s truth is greater than the objective truth? What happens when the victims of anything, victims of mere life itself, are spared from accountability, reason, or intellectual honesty? 

People begin to see the value of victimhood. Victimhood then becomes less of a trait and more of a social currency. People seeking victimhood tend to wear it on their sleeves. After all, what good is being the victim if nobody knows about it?

The effects of victim immunity seem to be getting clearer every day. When you position yourself as a victim, even rhetorically, it stands a chance to cease and dismiss all questioning. All inquiry. All doubt. We all know the world is fucked up, and nobody wants to be at fault. While this is natural, we edge up against larger problems when victim status becomes a form of not only social currency but a kind of identity in and of itself.

This phenomenon has been theorized as a worldview to completion for some folks who otherwise feel incomplete. The traits of those who think this way are templated, and so too are their grudges and their rhetoric. For instance, there becomes a repetitive, incessant hyperbole in concretely personalizing the historical experiences of their group and projecting those experiences onto their daily life as if the momentous weight of that oppression falls onto their shoulders, daily. This can enable someone to feel powerful and, in some cases, give them a sense of purpose. Simply getting out of bed in the morning might feel like a revolutionary act, if oppression hides behind every corner.

On some level, they are a victim, but only to their worldview, not because of the world. The number of victims of this type of thinking gets maxed out in times of turmoil and cultural despair. In this way, seeing yourself as helpless and noble provides a type of insulation from action and potential blame. 

It allows the most mundane activity to be seen as a rebellious existential expression via their favorite hero — themselves. Sounds tiring, and it is — and how often do we hear these types of thinkers complain about how exhausted they are?

And being your own hero is not easy, but some people have to do it. What we ought to recognize, too, is that wanting to be seen as a victim is not a black thing, a gay thing, a minority concept. White folks do it in many cases, too. It is a human thing. 

But if we are encouraged to skirt responsibility, to blame others, to blame society, to blame white people, to blame men, to blame the rich, to blame Republicans, to blame Democrats, the immigrants — in the world of absolute immunity for the victim, perceived or real, positioning yourself as the victim in any scenario is the safest place to be because it is the furthest away from responsibility. To understand that concept is to understand why we see so many retreating towards victimhood status.

But freely question this article, I won’t position myself as a victim, my wounds were always self-inflicted and the only way out of hell is gratitude.

JSV
2023

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.