Playing the Victim Card

In my last column, I took exception to the belief that people who do bad things are really "good" inside. This was in reference to the beating and sexual violation of a girl in Lincoln Park. Of all the statements made by both sides of this tragedy, the one which disturbed me the most was made by the mother of the alleged ringleader of the attack. She insisted that her daughter was a victim, too.
A victim of what or whom? Certainly the schools are not responsible for creating a violent young woman who has two children at the age of seventeen. I don't think that peer pressure forced this girl to make all of her bad decisions. Who's left to take the responsibility?
The "victim card" is played so often in our society that it is losing its validity. It is commonplace for perpetrators to shirk responsibility for what they have done and point the finger elsewhere. I fail to see why any young person who has the opportunity to learn and better herself is a victim of anything except her own upbringing.
Bruno Bettelheim was a Jewish prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. Like many prisoners, his hands developed frostbite and gangrene in the bitter winter weather. Knowing that he needed the use of his hands to keep working (and stay alive), he visited the camp infirmary even though it was almost impossible for a Jew to get treatment. When the screeching SS officer challenged Bettelheim's right to medical help, Bettelheim replied calmly, without begging or arrogance, that he needed the removal of the dead skin on his hands so that he could work as ordered. The SS officer grabbed Bettelheim's hands and began to tear off the dead flesh. Bettelheim made no protest. The SS officer stopped and ordered Bettelheim into the clinic and watched him for signs of weakness or pain as the festering flesh was cut off. Bettelheim remained calm. The result was that the SS officer gave Bettelheim a card which gave him immediate admittance into the clinic thereafter,
Bettelheim explains: "Because my behavior did not correspond to what he expected of Jewish prisoners on the basis of his projection, he could not...activate the anxieties that went with his stereotype." In other words, if Bettelheim did not act like a victim, he would not be treated as one.
Brent Staples, in his essay "Black Men And Public Space," wrote of how his presence would disturb white people he would encounter on the sidewalk at night when he was a student at the University of Chicago. Used to being "scarcely noticeable" in the tough Pennsylvania industrial town of his youth, Staples realized that as a "youngish black man--a broad six feet two inches with a beard and billowing hair," he triggered strangers' fears because of their stereotypical beliefs regarding young black men.
Later, as a journalist, Staples was often the target of prejudicial thinking, once being mistaken for a burglar at the very paper for which he was writing. Staples admits that often he had to "smother the rage (he) felt so often at being taken for a criminal." To his credit, he did smother that rage and instead chose to quietly prove to people that their preconceived notions about him were wrong.
I do not mean to minimize the effects of prejudice in our society. I have been guilty of it myself. Once, on the first day of classes, I watched in silent dismay as a burly young man, dog collar around his neck, six-inch-tall spikes of hair on an otherwise shaved head, and, what seemed to me, an angry scowl on his face, walked into my room. Without ever having seen this boy before, I prepared myself for the worst. That young man was one of the most thoughtful, considerate and decent students it has been my privilege to teach.
There are two lessons to be learned in all of this: (1) People of all kinds are still often the victims of one prejudice or another. (2) The best way for victims to combat prejudice is not to act out in violence and anger. The best way is to follow the examples of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Refuse to be a victim. Choose to be a leader.