Moral disengagement in Reconstruction
In the last post, I said I was "aghast" that the white Democrats used self-defense as justification for their actions against black voters. According to Albert Bandura, however, I shouldn’t be surprised–that’s the way most inhumanities are perpetrated. In his article about just this phenomenon, moral disengagement in perpetrating inhumanities, Bandura uses psychological studies to identify several ways humans justify violent actions to themselves. Attribution of blame, or claiming that the victim provoked them, is one. The others include:
- Advantageous Comparison
- Displacement of Responsibility
- Diffusion of Responsibility
- Disregard or Distortion of Consequences
- Dehumanization
- Gradual Moral Disengagement
- Personal and Social Sanctions
I’m not exaggerating the cries of "self-defense" used during the 1870’s. The following is a newspaper quote from the Examiner, a Mississippi newspaper:
"The present contest is rather a revolution than a political campaign—it is the rebellion, if you see fit to apply that term, of a downtrodden people against an absolutism imposed by their own hirelings, and by the grace of God we will cast it off next November, or cast off the willfully and maliciously ignorant tools who eat our bread, live in our houses, attend schools that we support, come to us for aid and succor in their hour of need, and yet are deaf to our appeals when we entreat them to assist us in throwing off a galling yoke that has been born until further endurance is but the basest cowardice."
In the quote, I’ve italicized some telling language (euphemistic labeling). The whites are "downtrodden" by the blacks, who they describe as "hirelings" and "tools." This kind of dehumanization prevents us from having emotional, empathetic responses to the plight of others. They are tools and not people. Further, the actions of the whites are justified because they’re being oppressed, have been patient, but cannot be any longer.
Gradual Moral Disengagement refers to taking small steps in adjusting the individual’s conscience to the actions. Perhaps a guard merely prepares an individual for torture, but does not torture them himself. Continued exposure to this activity can lead to more direct actions, as time goes on. For the South, this disengagement had been occurring for centuries as slavery adjusted the whites to actions (beatings, poverty, disenfranchisement) that became normal.
Too, although humans are rational agents, Bandura emphasizes the social background of decisions–social structures determine what is considered "fair", although individuals are not solely determined by their environment.
Advantageous Comparison is another way to justify inhumane actions. In the South during this time, it was connected to claims of self-defense. If they did not kill blacks, even unarmed people, they would be subject to "slaughter, rape, arson and robbery" (Lemann, 87). Thus, in their pragmatic calculus, they were preventing more killing and maintaining social order.
And the consequences for the blacks? Because whites viewed them as inferior, they didn’t see that they were oppressing them. Rather, they "considered themselves not as prejudiced against Negroes but merely protectors of that natural order" (65). This is Distortion of Consequences.
At least from what I read of the events, because the violence was so direct, there was little justification by way of displacement or diffusion of responsibility. White militiamen gladly took up arms, and did not view themselves (as modern people might) as merely cogs in a great machine, or only doing what their superiors wished. Rather, they fully justified their own actions, slaying blacks gladly and with perverted glee in many instances.
As I read the accounts, during which the sluggishness of communication and travel played an important part, I was struck by the changes in the last one hundred years. In part due to the rapidity with which progressive ideas can travel, as well as people, our political system is (to some extent) far more civil, though still corrupt in many places. No longer do we have openly violent engagements between Democrats and Republicans.
However, in terms of justifying inhumane actions, we are far more prone to viewing ourselves as not responsible, only a small part of the great machine which we cannot control. The strategies that Bandura and other social scientists have observed are ones which I think we can see continuing today. Our military does not allow photographers near battle zones, he points out, as the positive effects of humanization can counteract the negative justifications I’ve outlined. The famous photograph of the naked Vietnamese girl turned public opinion against the war, and a soldier in the My Lai massacre stood his ground because he saw children like his own.
How could the United States take advantage of positive strategies against moral disengagement, in the "War against Terror"? How could we humanize ourselves in the Middle East? How could we encourage the cogs in the machine of Al Qaeda to see their actions as hurting innocents like their own family? What role does religion have to play in these strategies of moral disengagement (in terms of euphemistic language or advantageous comparisons)? And where are these strategies still part of our national and foreign policy, justifying actions which are unethical?
Please note: The poster above could read "Muslims" or "Whites" or "Americans" just as easily as "Christians", keeping in mind the strategies Bandura has identified. Really, I think the artist should have just said "we" and let it stand at that.
Article: "Moral Disengagement in Perpetration of Inhumanities," from Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1088-8683, July 1, 1999, Vol 3, Issue 3
Image: Parody of a World War II poster, at About.com