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The Tragedy of Victimization
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11854 |
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Section : |
EDITORIAL
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| Issue
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1 / 1994 |
1,256 Words |
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Moton A. Kaplan
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Last April, our Currents in Modern thought section published several essays under the title "Victim-Mania." Since then there seems to have been increasing public discussion of topics such as "multiculturalism" and "diversity," usually accompanied by attempts to attain or assign victim status by or to one or other social group. The issue has been a hot one but has not, thus far, generated much light.
Although individuals and groups have been victimized--and although compensation for those who have been directly victimized would be provided by a just process--the attempt to portray as victims those who have been only indirectly, if at all, victimized--simply on the basis of their religious or ethnic identification--is a tragedy for those so characterized. It is of service only to those who use these supposed victims for their own political or economic purposes.
We all have to depend on others at certain times in life. But active independence is a product mostly of self-help. Education for children, rehabilitation for accident victims, compensation for mistreatment can all be accommodated productively. They are all related to direct circumstances that the individual cannot be expected to control and that have a clear and direct relationship to the injury or situation for which assistance is offered, based on equality with all other qualifying candidates. Because of this, they do not in general connote inferiority in the recipient or promote a sense of resentment in those who provide the redress or who do not receive comparable benefits.
Germany's reparations payments to European Jews, for instance, are fully justified, but the descendants of those Jews have no appropriate claims against Germany. Although there may have been some indirect injuries, their circumstances were no worse than those of many who simply had the misfortune to be born to damaged parents. Similarly, reparations payments to Japanese for internment during World War II appropriately are only to those who were interned, even though their descendants may have suffered hardships that would not have occurred in the absence of internment.
However, we have still not behaved fairly to the interned Japanese. They were interned as part of a land grab, not because of any danger to the United States. They were an insignificant minority on the West Coast, where they were interned, while on the more vulnerable Hawaiian Islands, where they formed a significantly large minority, they were not interned. However, they owned good farmland on the West Coast, whereas they were only
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