speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

The Struggle for Respect
declining often clings desperately to its residual tokens of respect,
while a subordinate group frustrated in its aspirations to wealth or
power may still assert its dignity. Because status, unlike wealth, is an
indivisible good whose meaning is relational, competition is a zerosum
game. Even if a subordinate group asks only a minimum of
respect, the dominant group rightly perceives this as challenging its
superiority. 57
Collective status competition pervades daily life. It motivates
controversies over legislation ostensibly directed toward practical
ends: homosexuality in the military, AIDS, abortion, animal rights,
tobacco, gun control, crime and social disorder, welfare and immigration.
The campaign against sexual harassment significantly redefines
the relative status of men and women. Status is implicated
whenever the state engages religion (as in the battle over Ayodhya in
India). It resonates in the curriculum wars: multiculturalism in
schools, the revision of the literary and historical canon in universities.
Intrareligious conflicts over the ordination of women or the
celebration of homosexual marriages affect status. Public events and
exhibits define and modify status: the exclusion of gays and lesbians
from the St. Patrick's Day parades in New York and Boston, or
commemoration of the Columbus Quincentenary. The treatment of
ancestral bones arouses collective passions—the recently discovered
black graveyard from colonial New York or the display of Indian
skeletons in museums—as does the appropriation of Indian names
and mascots by sports teams. The media have become increasingly
sensitive to such issues, as shown by the furor over the portrayal of
gays and lesbians in the film "Basic Instinct"; so have public
officials, as illustrated by the response to Bill Clinton's remark that
Mario Cuomo acts like a Mafioso. The legal system receives intense
scrutiny because of its visible power and explicit commitment to
equality; the initial acquittal of the four Los Angeles police who beat
Rodney King provoked the largest uprising in twentieth-century
American history. Nations compete for status (often when they are
declining along other parameters): Japan-bashing in the United
States, for instance, or European Community conflicts over the
languages of diplomacy. Aggressor nations like Germany and Japan
must be particularly sensitive to their former victims, as shown by
the uproar over Korean "comfort women" or the Emperor's visit to
China, Germany's hospitality to Kurt Waldheim or its handling of
neo-Nazi violence against foreigners.
Re-reading my three stories as status competition illuminates their
many common features. Each borrows buzz words from the others.
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