chapter seven
Identifying and Targeting Rankism
“Rankism is far more encompassing than racism, sexism, or ageism. Rankism must be our prime target from now on.”
—Studs Terkel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Working and The Good War
Once we can talk about rankism, we can start to target it specifically, stopping it wherever we find it. To do that, we need to first identify rankism in our own attitudes and behaviors, as well as in others’.
Identifying Rankism in Ourselves and Others
Rankism can be harder to identify in yourself than in other people, but it is also easier to correct. Hard as it may be to change yourself, it is usually easier to change your own attitudes and behaviors than it is to persuade, convince, or force others to change theirs. For this reason, it can be helpful to address your own and others’ rankism simultaneously. Here is a simple method we find useful:
- Notice rankist attitudes and behaviors in other people. Some possible questions to ask:
- a. Did someone try to make you feel like a nobody?
- b. Did a person or group silence people’s expression of legitimate concerns?
- c. Were you or someone else threatened or humiliated?
- Look at where you may be exhibiting similar tendencies or behaviors (even if yours seem less obvious).
- Work to change your own rankist attitudes and behaviors, even as you stand up for your own dignity and help to establish new standards of dignity for all.
“How easily we put down those we see as subordinate in title or wealth or origin; how silently we cringe at another’s assumption of superiority. I saw myself in some of the examples, and I shuddered.”
—Anthony Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning former columnist for The New York Times, commenting on examples of rankism in the book Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank
A Key Indicator: An Attitude of Superiority
Sometimes rankism is not a visible behavior. It can show up as an attitude of superiority or a closed mind. For example, a mind that closes itself off to outside influence may think—consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or involuntarily—“I’m right and you’re wrong, and therefore I’m better.” “I know. You don’t—and so I’m superior.”
This kind of rankist thinking may be found in any domain, e.g., ideological, religious, or academic. It is generally present when people believe their view to be the one right way. It flourishes wherever people pride themselves on knowing the truth or being more knowledgeable or capable than others. We may not be able to completely eliminate rankist thinking, but we can certainly learn to identify it and to stop any rankist behaviors that may issue from such thoughts.
Overt Rankism
Overt rankism would include behavior such as firing a whistle-blower— someone who exposed an organizational practice that higher-ranking people within the organization did not want exposed. This phenomenon is well recognized in business and government settings, but is also present elsewhere, such as in non-profit organizations and religious institutions. These often have fewer built-in protections for workers, e.g., no unions or fair treatment policies, or they may have governance structures that foster rankism because there are few checks and balances to safeguard dignity.
For example, in some organizations it is standard practice to hold so-called “elections” for seats on the governing body, but in fact, members are not allowed any choice when voting. Instead, members’ only option is to ratify a single slate of “nominees.” This enables new representatives to be hand-picked either by a single person in charge or a few people appointed by the governing body to make the nominations. This kind of system facilitates rank abuse. Interested and capable people may be deliberately or inadvertently excluded. The observable result is a silencing or under-representation of voices that are not part of the dominant power group.
Groups may sometimes legitimately choose to operate with non-democratic processes, such as appointment of individuals to a governing board, rather than elections. In such cases, it is important to consider the kinds of safeguards that may help ensure that rankism does not infect the process, such as announcing in advance any openings to be filled and soliciting from the entire membership names of interested individuals.
Covert Rankism
Covert or hidden rankism might include giving a bogus reason for terminating the employment of a whistleblower (e.g., “We’re restructuring the department.”); or, not promoting an employee whose work performance is excellent but cultural background is different from the supervisor’s.
Hidden rankism is more subtle than blatantly rankist behavior, and therefore can be more challenging to address. Moreover, these subtle forms of rankism are often part of accepted organizational practices, so they tend to be invisible to most people. Exposing these forms of rankism requires articulating “what’s wrong” with the behavior—as well as what is preferable about dignitarian behavior—to people who do not yet have a conceptual framework for understanding these issues.
In such cases, methods must be found to educate one or more people in the organization about rankism and its relation to dignity. For example, a general article about rankism and dignity could be published in the organization’s newsletter. You may also try to enlist the aid of high-rank holders, explaining to them the principles behind your efforts. If recruitment of high-ranking individuals is not an option, or fails when tried, the next step may be to band together with others to effect change as a group.
Effects of Rankism
Sometimes rankism is most easily identified by observing the effects it has on individuals or a group. These might be physiological, emotional, psychological, mental, spiritual, behavioral, or organizational. When we notice certain feelings or conditions, we can look to see if they may be traceable to experiences of rank abuse, and then take action to target the rankism that produced the effect.
Effects on Individuals
Negative emotions
Effects of rankism on individuals may include such feelings as shame, humiliation, anxiety, fear, anger, rage, low self-esteem, insecurity, depression, paralysis, loss of confidence, and/or reduced ability to focus or process information.
Stress
Being subjected to indignity produces stress and can trigger potentially debilitating emotional or physical responses. Stress reactions typical to a given individual, such as rapid breathing, sweaty palms, difficulty sleeping, confusion, or nervousness, are symptoms that may have rankism as their source.
Here are a few ideas for speaking up effectively to target rankism.
- Aim to educate. Give a person or group who is displaying rankist behavior the summary of rankism and its consequences and remedies available at www.dignityforall.org.
- Approach the other person or group as an ally, from the viewpoint that you are all on the same team and all want to create a climate of dignity.
- Use “I” statements, as much as possible, rather than “you” statements that appear to blame. For example, saying, “When you did that, I felt angry, hurt, and humiliated. I felt as if my dignity had been assaulted. Could we talk about some other ways the issue might have been addressed?” This models a way to speak about the impact the other person’s rankism has had on you and provides a basis for an exploratory conversation in which both parties are free to truthfully share their experiences and explore other options for behavior.
- Take an inquiring stance, seeking to understand the other person’s possible motivations and framework for thinking.
- Gently—and, as much as possible, without judgment—explain that the behavior the other has engaged in is rankist and why. Try to offer an alternative way that the person or group could have addressed the issue.
Effects on Organizations
Reduced productivity and revenue
Loss of productivity and reduced revenue are measurable byproducts of a culture of rankism in organizations, largely because people need to expend so much effort to defend themselves against assaults on their dignity. Mental attention is simply not available for focused and productive work. Creativity, ability to solve problems and respond to crises, and capacity to learn are impaired.
Crisis management
Relatively small problems can turn into major crises because of rankist behavior. Silencing of “whistleblowers,” truth tellers, or dissenters, for example, can mean loss of information crucial to organizational functioning. This, in turn, reduces the organization’s capacity to effect optimal outcomes. Before the 1986 U.S. space shuttle disaster, lower ranking individuals within NASA repeatedly tried to call attention to the shuttle’s faulty O-rings, later found to be the source of the shuttle explosion. Higher-ranking officials silenced those voices, the launch occurred as planned, and the shuttle blew up minutes later. [See Sidebar, Rankism in Organizations: Lessons from NASA.]
Widespread system dysfunction
Employees and other members of an organization are affected emotionally by rankism and this can result in widespread system dysfunction. Loss of loyalty, acts of revenge or sabotage, and passing on rankist behavior to others lower in rank are some of the behaviors that can result from rankism in an organization. From a systems perspective, rankism produces dispersed, generalized anxiety in the overall system. A system with anxiety in it will act out that anxiety through individuals—who may be labeled as “troublemakers,” “dysfunctional individuals,” or other names. Individuals thus get blamed for the problems of the system, when in fact they are primarily acting out the dysfunction of the system, the root cause of which is rankism.
Effects on Societies
System malfunctions, such as public health problems and national disasters
At the societal level, rankism produces effects similar to those at individual and organizational levels, but on a broader scale. Within nations, for example, infringements of the people’s dignity occur when legal standards of safety in hazardous industries are set lower than is healthful for the population or when illegal safety violations are not prosecuted. Permitting businesses to maintain practices known to cause public health problems—such as injury or death among coal miners, or illnesses like asthma, mercury poisoning, or types of cancers associated with environmental pollutants— is rankist, and these forms of rankism can have powerful and damaging effects.
Rankism in Organizations: Lessons from NASA
The Mars Climate Orbiter mission failure in 1979 was due in part to what might be called technological rankism. It starts with an unquestioning reverence for those who are anointed as experts or who assume that mantle on their own. All too often, they stifle discussion and quash dissension on technical issues—a form of technical intimidation.
During the flight to Mars there were early warning signs that something was wrong in the trajectory analysis, but the navigation team wouldn’t listen. When problems were pointed out they essentially said, “Trust us. We’re the experts.” Due to a software error, the spacecraft entered too low in the Martian atmosphere and consequently burnt up. This was foreseeable during the flight and could have been corrected, but we caved in to the insistence of the navigation team that everything would be all right. That’s technological rankism.
A similar dynamic is well documented in the shuttle disasters. Prior to the Challenger flight, engineers had warned that the unusually low temperature [in Florida the night before the launch] could be a problem for the O-rings. In this case, pressure by management to launch on time silenced engineering concerns. This wasn’t technological rankism; rather, it was garden-variety managerial rankism that led to one of our most vivid national disasters.
The Columbia accident investigation report shows a similar phenomenon: As what the board calls an ‘informal chain of command’ began to shape [the flight’s] outcome, location in the structure empowered some to speak and silenced others.”
Rankism was a major contributing cause of both shuttle disasters.
—Dr. Noel Hinners, former director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and former director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
International tensions
On a national and international scale, rankism can result in the inability to resolve issues that naturally arise from differences among peoples; in bullying of smaller, less powerful countries by larger nations; and in terrorism, which is both a form of rankism toward others and a method for retaliation and revenge.
Complex social ills
Rankism is a contributing factor to a wide range of societal problems, such as illiteracy and crime. The complex relationships that exist between rankism and various social ills merits study and consideration as we move toward a more dignitarian world.
KEY POINTS:
- To effectively target rankism, we first need to identify it, in ourselves and others.
- Rankism is both attitudinal and behavioral, and it can be overt or covert.
- Sometimes rankism can best be identified by observing its detrimental effects—on individuals, organizations, and societies. Then we can identify and target the rankist treatment that produced the effects.