…faced with fear, or saturated with certainty, self-righteousness or rage, anyone is vulnerable to the temptation to dehumanize.

Last week fifty documented immigrants were told that if they got on a plane in Texas they would be flown to Boston, where jobs and housing were waiting. Instead, they were routed through Florida and landed on Martha’s Vineyard, a tiny island off the coast of Massachusetts with a reputation as a retreat for wealthy liberals. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis footed the bill, with the support of Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Before and after this particular incident, other immigrants have been bussed from Texas to Washington, DC, one group dropped off on a sidewalk in front of Vice President Kamala Harris’s home.

While some of the specifics of these incidents are in dispute, those essential facts are not. Reactions were quick and loud, many applauding the governors for making a point about immigration, others absolutely appalled.

I count myself among those deeply frustrated with simplistic, cynical, and self-righteous responses to the complex issue of immigration from all points on the political spectrum. I appreciate earnest and honest efforts to resolve it. I am grateful for the community and faith groups, individuals, organizers, and non-profits working diligently to respond to the thousands of people in crisis as a result of our collective failure to figure this out.

All of that was in my thinking last week. So was dehumanization. In opinion pieces, letters to the editor, and everyday conversation, liberals, progressives, conservatives and politically unaligned alike reported feeling disgusted, sickened, and revolted by the dehumanization of those fifty people. It was an outpouring of moral outrage – with dehumanization at its center.

I was right there with them, and I also kept thinking about the sneaky reach of dehumanizing, how even the morally outraged can be nonetheless in its thrall.

Psychologists characterize dehumanization, largely, in two ways. Human beings are regarded and treated as less than human, generally as animals or objects. In the context of this disregard, people are used for financial, strategic, or political ends. At its extreme, some kinds of people are seen as not human at all, worthy, then, of extermination. 

Writing for the nonprofit, The Conversation, psychologist Allison Skinner-Dorkenoo worries about the “slippery slope” of dehumanization, pointing to myriad studies in which seeing people as non-human emerges as a precursor to harassment, violence, and systemic oppression, and leading to increased public support for torture and indiscriminate acts of war. “I get a bit uneasy,” Skinner-Dorkenoo writes, “when I see these types of insults get normalized.” 

That’s part of what I’ve been thinking about, reflecting on some of my colleagues and friends, good-hearted, earnest, thoughtful proponents of a less violent, more just world, some of whom expressed outrage last week and in the past months referred to public figures as pigs, asses, even, literally, not human.

Is that a step onto Skinner-Dorkenoo's “slippery slope?”  I honestly don’t know for sure, but I do know it’s worth considering.

So is the other, less often considered, form of dehumanization; that is, characterizing groups and individuals only in terms of to some extent real, but merely partial, negative aspects. Thus – for example, and incorrectly: Mormons are seen as only polygamist cults. Muslims are seen as only violent jihadists. White men are characterized only by social privilege. In daily life – a terrible boss nothing else but terrible boss. The disagreeable bus driver is nothing but a jerk.

The trouble with all this is that none of these characterizations can possibly be true, because every single human being is complex, as is every collection of people. Not only that, those complexities represent identities, life stories and cultures. Denying complexity, especially out loud, feels like an attack and often elicits a like response. It does not serve an intention for more thriving and peaceful systems, or a more thriving and peaceful world.

Dehumanization of this kind is also strategically unsound, because disregarding the inarguable complexity of any group or person means missing opportunities for effecting change. People act out of their whole complex selves. Groups, tribes, and nations are utterly and profoundly complex. Effective resistance, defense, or alliance requires understanding that complexity.

Still, as I wrote earlier, dehumanization is sneaky. Apparently, it literally gets into our heads. VOX science and health editor Brian Resnick reports, for example, that neuroscience research at Princeton University indicates, “when we dehumanize others, the regions of our brain associated with disgust turn on and the regions associated with empathy turn off.”

That’s what allowed someone to speak an absolute lie to those fifty already vulnerable, traumatized human beings flown to Martha’s Vineyard, and to the parents of a one-month-old baby dropped off on a sidewalk in D.C without even a bottle of water.  

But this week after thinking and reading about it, I’ve come to believe that, faced with fear, or saturated with certainty, self-righteousness or rage, anyone is vulnerable to the temptation to dehumanize. It seems to me that trying at least to resist that temptation is essential to the possibility of more people thriving in an increasingly peaceful world. 

_______________

Read the full September 23, 2022 issue of Intersections, the ILI Newsletter.