Dehumanization And Devaluation: The Spiritual Core Of Social Inequality

From Tikkun:

«Personal Growth and Social Change (Part 1)Alan Grayson, Progressives and the Regulatory Process »






Dehumanization and Devaluation: The Spiritual Core of Social Inequalityby: Amanda Udis-Kessler on August 8th, 2010
No Comments »

Homeless man (photo by Matthew Woitunski)

In carrying out one of my first writing assignments for seminary (which has been going on for a week and which is just awesome), I began thinking about what for me is a somewhat new approach to the connection between spirituality and politics. These ideas are still in process, but perhaps they might be of value to some spiritual progressives.



Most writings on social inequality (racism, sexism, class inequality, homophobia, and ableism, among other types) that I have read have a particular focus. They pay attention to the financial penalties of being in a disadvantaged group, or the threat of physical violence that goes with such a group membership. Certainly, most such writings document the externally limited life opportunities of being a person of color, or poor, or female (for example). These are critically important aspects of inequality, but devaluation and dehumanization are equally important – and equally present – in any form of inequality that has both structural and cultural elements. And devaluation and dehumanization have profound spiritual implications for how social inequality works.



Devaluation in this context means just what it sounds like: a person is treated in ways that signal their lesser value, worth or competence compared to other people, based on their gender or sexuality or race or class or disability or other such status. If I cease to be treated as the expert on whether I’m living a moral life because I’m not heterosexual, I’ve been devalued. If a poor person is assumed to be poor because he’s lazy, rather than because the job market in his area is irredeemably racist, he’s been devalued. If a person with a mental illness is defined as “low-functioning” rather than “high-functioning,” her value has been called into question because it is seen as unclear what she has to offer the world (as is beautifully and heartbreakingly stated by Pat Deegan in an essay in Readings for Diversity and Social Justice).



Dehumanization takes devaluation a step further, or many steps further. I become, not Amanda with my many complexities, gifts, and struggles, but “that queer.” Someone else becomes “a welfare mother” or “an illegal immigrant” or “a retard.” Adjectives mutate into nouns, and people get lost. Once someone is dehumanized, it’s easy to ignore their wants and needs, easy to reject their wisdom, and in extreme cases, easy to kill them. All inequality-based violence starts with dehumanization.



While it is true that devaluation and dehumanization interconnect with other aspects of inequality such as violence, I’ve come to think that they merit a much closer examination by spiritual progressives for a different reason. Put simply, dehumanization and devaluation are at the spiritual core of social inequality. As such, they both deepen the pain of inequality’s other aspects and they inflict their own special kind of spiritual violence – a violence that ultimately harms both the devalued individual and the one who benefits from the devaluation process.



A devalued and dehumanized person who cannot resist internalizing these processes is in spiritual danger. He may act self-destructively or lash out at others. She may give up hope of having a joyful life. They may lose their connection with whatever is holy both within and beyond them. Whatever else is true, such a person cannot live abundantly, and spirituality is about nothing if it is not about living abundantly.



While the brunt of spiritual violence falls on the devalued person, even those who benefit from a given form of inequality are spiritually attenuated by the dehumanization of others. If there is that of God in every single person, any social structure that keeps people apart and fearful of each other has tragic consequences for the spiritual well-being of those on both sides of the metaphorical (or actual) fence. For example, I was taught to fear and dehumanize poor people and people of color as a young New Yorker, a fear that informs my spiritual life even today. Having read Sara Miles’ marvelous book Take This Bread, I am struck by Miles’ ability to serve exactly those people I fear the most. I have no doubt that, had I not been raised a racist and classist, I would be able to go wherever I felt the need to be greatest and give of myself much more fully than I can now. My inability to do this does not begin to compare to the spiritual violence experienced by someone who has been reduced to a stereotype, but it nonetheless does violence to my best self.



If dehumanization and devaluation can reasonably be understood as the spiritual core of social inequality, organized religion has a powerful opportunity to serve a healing role. Specifically, religion can affirm people who have been dehumanized and devalued, can lift up their goodness and honor the sacred spark in them. In fact, this kind of affirmation may be the greatest gift organized religion can provide to such people, because religion is invested with both meaning and moral authority. As we all know well, religion has been guilty of its own practices of devaluing and dehumanizing, both historically and still today. Even so, among all of our social institutions, religion is the best suited to re-humanizing and revaluing the people who need such restoration. And spiritual and religious progressives are perhaps the people of faith most suited to taking up this project.



Because religious re-humanization and revaluing could theoretically take place in a wide variety of contexts, it is a task available to any of us with a connection to organized religion. Preachers could preach about it. Theologians could write and teach about it. Social action committees and community ministers could explicitly draw the link between the spirituality of re-humanization and revaluing, and the work they are doing in the world; one might even argue that Dr. King did this exceptionally well. Pastoral counselors and chaplains could infuse such a commitment into their work with suffering people. Spiritual directors could incorporate these values and practices into the guidance they provide when they counsel spiritual seekers. Religious educators could develop relevant curricula for children and adults and then use them in church or other meaningful settings.



Religion alone cannot be responsible for the enormous tasks of re-humanization and revaluation ahead of us, but if religion stepped up to the plate and made this work a priority in both a broad and deep way, all of us might eventually have what we need to live in true abundance.



I’m indebted to Mollie Ronge for helping me to improve this post, back when it was still an academic essay. Thanks, Mollie.