Scapegoating and classifying the ‘other’ in COVID-19 crisis
IF we’re really honest with ourselves we give more than a passing thought to “them”.
We sit in the car at the lights on the corner of Russell and West Sts and we spy the Victorian number plate. “How did they get here?” “Are they grey nomads?” “Are they locals who didn’t get around to changing their rego?” “Or are they reckless and selfish people who have sneaked into our town, ignoring the rules we’re all trying to keep?” “Putting us all at risk.”
I stumbled across this statement on the back of a car on my regular Sunday morning walk: “Just because it has Victorian rego don’t hate us. We are Queenslanders with a Victorian business address. “
And it made me sad.
Didn’t someone once upon a time say, “We’re all in this together” that “We’re all Victorians?”
When it comes down to it, these borders are just lines on a map that we have all agreed to abide by. We work with them. Three times a year they make football really interesting when we play State of Origin.
But are people truly so different? Do you really think that we Queenslanders are somehow better at keeping the COVID-19 rules than Victorians are? Or maybe we have just had a bit of dumb luck over recent months.
There seems to be something primal and ancient in the way we instantly create scapegoats.
“It’s the Chinese. It’s the Victorians. It’s them, over there … but it’s definitely not us.”
Perhaps it’s an evolutionary thing: identifying the risk, using our brains to classify and discriminate against the threatening “other” to ensure that our tribe survives to fight another day.
Philosopher Rene Girard named the scapegoating mechanism as the primary thread in the human story. And I reckon he was on the money.
The Jews, the Muslims, the Catholics, the Protestants, the refugees, the Asians, the homosexuals, the Blacks and every minority imaginable have at some time been held responsible for the suffering and hard times “we” are currently enduring.
If we can just remove this “contagion” we can keep the community healthy.
And for quite some time I have seen the scapegoating mechanism at work on the broad canvas of community, be it nation states or discrete cities and towns.
We have this deep desire to name and demonise the “other” to help create a sense of belonging and security and stability for “us”.
But it is not at the macro level that I find the scapegoating mechanism challenging: it is the micro level that pulls me up short time and time again.
Some days I return to my castle after a day’s work and unleash a little fury at the state of affairs.
I’m not talking geopolitics or the state of the economy. Things have been left undone in the house, items not put away, promises to complete tasks not kept.
It is as if order will be restored to my universe if I can just place the blame at the feet of the person unfortunate enough to be in my vicinity as I make my re-entry.
So I’ll be trying a little kindness the next time I spy a Victorian number plate.
For the record, I was born a fair bit South of NSW.