Why Do Some Minority Politicians Lack Empathy For Their Fellows?
Herman Cain. Aaron Schock. Marco Rubio. American politics is rife with minority successes who’ve disdained their people. We look into the strange psychology of racist Black Republicans, homophobic gay congressmen, anti-immigrant Latino senators, and their misdirected power.
Some successful individuals open doors for people to follow behind them. Others, meanwhile, slammed the doors shut.
It is easy to understand people lacking empathy for struggles they’ve not experienced. It is harder to understand a lack of empathy from those who have overcome systemic injustices.
What happens when these unempathetic achievers become policymakers and media influencers? For better or worse, their impact on the American political landscape is no longer hypothetical.
Herman Cain and the Art of Denial
Herman Cain was born in 1945 and grew up “poor but happy” in the historically racist Deep South. His meteoric rise, from computer systems analyst at Coca-Cola to Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and CEO of Godfather’s pizza, should have been a success story of the American civil rights movement.
However, at the time of his death on July 30, 2020, Cain’s legacy was one defined by COVID-19 denial — ironically, he died of the virus one month after appearing maskless at a Trump rally in Tulsa — wage and employee welfare suppression, and internalized racism.
Amid a pandemic that has disproportionately affected the Black population, the optics could not have been worse.
What lessons can be gleaned from Herman Cain, who spent his life denying systemic racism and opposing measures to fix it?
The authors of Lean In Messages and the Illusions of Control write that “Humans don’t like injustice, and when they cannot easily fix it, they often engage in mental gymnastics to make the injustice more palatable. Blaming victims for their suffering is a classic example — e.g., that person “must have done something” to deserve what’s happened to them.”
Powerful people like Herman Cain not only see their success as a personal triumph. By extension, they also interpret their peers’ lack thereof as personal failures. Perhaps most importantly, it gives the success story an ego trip. An ego trip, some might argue, which easily spirals into delusion and endangerment of others and themselves.
Denial of systemic injustices such as racism alleviates survivor’s guilt and removes the pressure to challenge inequality. After all, how could you be successful in a world that supposedly hates you?
Many other successful Black people who have taken this position — rapper Kanye West, commentator Candace Owens, politician and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson — claim that discussing systematic oppression is tiresome, perpetuates a victim narrative, and does nothing to uplift or empower Black people. They are bolstered in their beliefs due to advancements in civil rights, which have made racial injustices less apparent than they once were.
Although they claim to speak for Black people, their public narratives only support their individualistic goals. For their self-serving denial of racial injustice, they are rewarded with media attention, political positions, and important connections. This behavior may be an adaptation to survive in a capitalist society with a dominant racist culture.
This behavior is in reality rooted in a fear of stereotyping and denial of access to social safety nets. It leads to a divorcement from the pillars of one’s own identity, and a weakening of inter-group cohesion. This is called internalized oppression.
In The Psychology of Marginalized Groups, internalized oppression is defined as “the turning upon ourselves, upon our families, and upon our people. The distress patterns that result from the … oppression of the (dominant) society”.
Black Republicans, also see aligning with the Republican Party as an act of rebellion, rejecting the Democratic Party in which they have felt taken for granted. Fox News pundit Gianno Caldwell explains “Black lives don’t matter to Democrats, Black votes do,” While many Black people maintain conservative beliefs, the Democratic Party has retained 85% of Black votes since 1964. They feel that their loyalty has not been rewarded adequately with concrete legislation. Black Republicans believe the Republican economic policy is better for Black economic prosperity and development.
Aaron Schock and the Hypocritical Law
While some lack empathy for others who look like them, what about others that hide their true selves?
Last year, former Republican congressman Aaron Schock announced that he was a gay man after he resigned from Congress for misusing taxpayer funds to finance lavish vacations and office renovations.
The news was shocking because of his history of voting against same-sex marriage and staunchly opposing Pro-LGBT+ legislation, including abolishing the American military’s “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy.
His explanation for his political past was growing up in a super conservative family. Indeed, when Schock came out, he was rejected by his family and community.
There is a common occurrence where staunch anti LGBT+ politicians are caught in compromising situations, like former Ohio congressman Wes Goodman, former Oklahoma senator Ralph Shortey and most recently, right-wing Hungarian politician Jozsef Szajer, who was caught violating Covid restrictions by attending a 25-man orgy.
Many gay men learn to live in opposition to their truth to succeed in a homophobic society.
In the book, The Velvet Rage author Alan Downs writes “Velvet rage is the deep and abiding anger that results from growing up in an environment when I learn that who I am as a gay person is unacceptable, perhaps even unlovable. This anger pushes me at times to overcompensate and… to become something I believe will make me more acceptable and loved.”
This anger and self-hatred become a motivator and a destructive force in their lives, pushing them to success while also tormenting them inside. They are split between who they truly are and who they are taught to be.
The shame of being “other” leads them to become oppressors, punishing others that live truthfully.
At the same time, the inner turmoil pushes them to act out in risky behaviors (overspending, unsafe sexual practices, addiction) which proves their undoing or liberates them from deceit, depending on your perspective.
Would Aaron Schock have been a more compassionate politician if he had grown up in a culture that taught him not to hate himself? Schock wrote in his “apology letter” that if he was in congress today he would adamantly support LGBT rights.
Marco Rubio and Protecting Your Spot
The American Dream is about coming from nothing and working hard to overcome that. Why would someone not protect the laws that they benefitted from for others?
Florida senator Marco Rubio has a complicated history of immigration policy. He represents a state that has the third-largest Latino population in America. While also being a member of the conservative party, which has a history of being in opposition to immigration.
Rubio is one of the few Republicans that come from an immigrant background. His family (a grandfather, parents, two aunts, and an uncle) immigrated to the Us from Cuba. His grandfather illegally immigrated to the US as a former Cuban government employee during the Cuban missile crisis. They were allowed to stay in America, eventually gaining green cards and citizenship.
He has called for the tightening of laws for immigrants claiming that allowing immigrants to enter the US is a huge security risk. Even though many studies show that undocumented immigrants actually have no effect on crime.
Some have explained that republican Latinos are afraid of unchecked immigration, which threatens them by lowering wages for Latino workers at the bottom.
It might seem hypocritical but it can also be seen as self-protective, doing the best for their own families before helping others.
In Internalized Oppression: The Psychology of Marginalized Groups, it is explained that “In addition to institutional oppression, oppression also occurs at the interpersonal level between individuals and within groups (e.g., American-born Asians refer to newly arrived immigrants as “FOB” — fresh off the boat).”
“Internalized oppression may cause oppressed groups to victimize each other. A logical extension of horizontal violence is intergroup violence between oppressed groups. Similar to intragroup violence, anger toward the oppressor is redirected to those who are equally (or perhaps more) vulnerable.”
When immigrants raise in status and reach a comfortable level in society, they still have the anxiety of losing it all and being replaced. With many, there is no empathy for their former selves, more relief that they are no longer on the bottom.
Once marginalized people succeed in life, many distance themselves from the years of hardship they may have suffered, and rationalize them as inevitable and not worth challenging.
There will always be people that turn against their own to assimilate into the status quo. As Author Ijeoma Oluo states “When you have a comparative identity that’s defined by how much better you are than others, then a change in how others are doing is the primary threat to your identity”. Even the success of your peers becomes threatening.
Another explanation is that they no longer remember what it is like to be on the bottom. In an interview with Npr, social scientist Shankar Vedantam states that “ is that once you’ve actually been through a difficult experience, it might be very hard to put yourself back in the mental frame of somebody who’s confronting that experience for the first time because you’ve dealt with it.”
Conclusion
It’s sad but true: society’s devaluation of certain groups will lead you to hate said group, even when you belong to it.
As long as we live in a society that is ruled by inequality and oppression, where success is conceptualized as scarce, the Cains, Schocks, and Rubios of the world will never stop coming.
Edited by Ryan Sng