Opinion: Would People of Color Have Oppressed White People if the Roles Were Reversed?

Morality is a function of power

Photo byEl Tres de Mayo, by Francisco de Goya taken from Wikimedia Commons

Is there any actual distinction in the immorality or predisposition to malice in bad actors, or is the only thing that separates them from their victims a disparity in power? Said another way, would the victim in any given situation be just as likely to do to the bad actor what the bad actor is doing to them, if fortune had instead decided to put the power imbalance in their favor? I would argue, yes, most victims and villains are identical save for the power allotted to them.

We can look at this question in two contexts: 1) interactions between individuals, and 2) interactions between groups of people. There are, of course, individuals who would do good with the power given to them, and there are individuals who would do bad with the power given to them. However, if we take a large enough group, we should assume a moral averaging.

For example, if you take any random sampling of a million people, and put them in the same context, you’ll likely get very similar moral outcomes. There will be good and bad actors among them such that the net effect should be functionally identical between different groups.

History Reimagined

Let us invert history for a moment, to ask ourselves the same question, using specific examples. When societies first began to spring up and lift humanity out of a state of nature, the patriarchy likely saw its origins because males were, on average, the gender with significantly more physical strength and size. In less civilized times, might would make right and that would result in the prevailing order. If women had instead been granted this power imbalance in their favor, would we have seen a matriarchy that was every bit as oppressive towards men, as the patriarchy was towards women?

Let’s consider another example. One of my favorite books of all time is Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Diamond does a masterful job of detailing how the flora and fauna available on each continent, as well as some geographic particulars, led to the inequality we see throughout human history — and by extension the modern world.

For example, he explains why Europeans were able to see the technological and societal development they did relative to people living in some other places in the world. The Europeans were blessed with the advantages of a host of high-calorie yielding grain plants, a number of large mammals capable of pulling carts, and an East-West axis spanning the Eurasian continent that allowed for the sharing of domesticates across a similar climate.

Native Americans, on the other hand, independently invented the wheel in the area of modern-day Mexico, but the closest animal capable of pulling any rolling vehicle was the llama, down in the area of Peru. Native Americans had some grains, such as corn, quinoa, and amaranth, but nothing as productive or easy to store as what Europeans were able to glean from the Fertile Crescent. The American continents have a clear North-South axis, so the sharing of different domesticates between different cultures was hindered, as they would have to adapt to a markedly different climate. If Native Americans had the advantages of Europeans, would they have similarly used the overwhelming power imbalance to eventually murder, rob, and enslave the Europeans?

The Accidental Superpower by Peter Zeihan is a fascinating work that examines how The United States of America came into its position of global hegemony by a serendipitous combination of factors based on geography, demographics, and energy independence. The country’s massive array of natural resources guaranteed its sway on the global economy. A quick look at a map shows us how the U.S. enjoys the privilege of being insulated by oceans on both sides, a propitious laying out of mountain ranges to act as borders to the East and West, a huge amount of arable land, and a host of navigable waterways.

Many have sought to vilify the U.S., but what other countries, if wielding such enormous power would not have done the same — or worse? Arguably, any tyrannical country would do far worse (see “Why Democracy Is Inherently Anti-War” for an explanation as to why), and any other democratic nation would be expected to do more or less the same. If we take wrongful actions by the U.S. in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, can we say that if the situation were reversed the Vietnamese, Afghans, or Iraqis would have done any better in regards to the U.S.?

For all our examples, let us simply state as a principle: When comparing two populations, we can expect the aforementioned moral averaging to occur, so it is all but certain that in the same context, the outcomes for each group would be more or less the same.

Power

We tend to assume some degree of moral rectitude in victims, but there’s really no reason to assume that they are not just as immoral as the villain. I define “power” simply as the ability to effect change. The more of it you have, the more you can influence the world around you. If morality is based on doing good or doing ill, then power is a natural magnifier of morality.

Thus, we find that the victim or the oppressed exist in a state functionally outside of morality. They don’t have the option to do bad to the oppressor, so they are not in a position to commit moral or immoral acts. They are, for the most part, in a forced state of moral neutrality. It’swhen one rises to a position of power that they can end up as a hero or villain.

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This can and does play out on the individual level as well. If we think of the people causing the most harm in the world right now, we might imagine some dictator or shady billionaire. We assume they are worse than everyone else. In truth though, they may not be more immoral than the general population, they might only be more powerful.

If we walk the school grounds and see a situation where one child is bullying and the other is being bullied, we might assume there’s a bad actor and a good one. If we assume that the bullied child is incapable of bullying their tormentor, however, then they exist in a place of forced moral neutrality. They may be every bit the bully deep down, but they don’t have the means to act on it.

There is no shortage of situations where a woman half the size of her boyfriend has sought to lay hands on him. It is largely ineffective, so she is treated as less of a villain than the man who beats his girlfriend who is half his size. This system of judgment is a sensible one. We’re working with measures of real-world harm.

However, it also implies that moral intent is not the sole, or even primary, consideration when gauging the morality of an act. To recognize this is to create something of a moral equivalency between villain and victim, and to instead recast the differentiating factor between the two parties as one of relative power.

Responsibility

If we can acknowledge that bad actors are not actually worse than their victims in most cases, then we can view moral responsibility as being conditional on power. For example, we needn’t vilify men, Europeans, or Americans to hold them accountable. They are human beings doing what human beings will.

They, however, are groups that rose to a threshold of moral responsibility that others did not. In the immortal words of Spiderman’s Uncle Ben, “With great power, comes great responsibility.”

The scrutiny of “bad actors” becomes more selective and more impactful for this reason. It is very fair to say that all those in power have an inherent onus to do better than those who are not in power. This does not imply that they are in some way worse or evil, but simply that their privileged position has augmented their moral impact in such a way that they need to be more careful with their actions than those who are less privileged.

The powerful need to be held to account, but they also need to be forgiven. When we see these groups who have done ill on a massive scale, we grow hateful towards them, and this can result in escalatory conflict. Those who would insist that some demographic should be punished for the wrong they’ve done are missing the true dynamics at play.

Those who have done wrong should be stopped from doing wrong — and made to right those wrongs. However, every demographic is, morally speaking, functionally interchangeable. There are bad actors in positions of power, and there are bad systems for managing power (e.g. dictatorship), but mostly it is not badness that underlies the harm, it’s simply a power disparity.

Conclusion

By reframing morality as a function of power, we can be evenhanded in dealing with bad acts. Not only do we remove thefalse stigma of unique badness from certain groups, but we remove any justification for whataboutism.

I’ve heard people argue that the wrongs of slavery aren’t deserving of recompense because everyone who could enslave someone else did. I’ve heard arguments that the wrong of killing and eating animals is justifiable because animals kill and eat one another. People have argued that a man should be able to beat a much smaller woman senseless if she lays hands on him first.

Perhaps in all of these cases there is, naturally, a moral equivalence between victim and victimizer. However, as the victimizer has the power, they are judged on a different moral scale. Whether that power is earned, or granted by chance, it is still attended by a novel moral responsibility, and this responsibility is inescapable.