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When It’s Personal, It’s Possible

A time to celebrate, David Paterson becomes governor. Yes, it is a momentous day for African Americans and people with disabilities. But it’s much more than that.

David Paterson furthers my hope that we as a country can finally abandon the puppet strings we have danced to for over two centuries – the false belief that following the people on top of our hierarchies will create a healthy country that truly operates for all of us and for the good of the world.

I mean nothing personal against people like George Bush who are on top of every major hierarchy in this country. I’m perhaps one of the few who still believes that Mr. Bush is not a liar, thief, jerk, etc. Instead, I see Mr. Bush as well meaning. But also, I see him as a person who is totally clueless – clueless at the top of our hierarchies.

Mr. Bush is not our first leader rendered clueless by our hierarchies. It’s part of our heritage.

Thomas Jefferson left his home – managed by his wife, who had much fewer legal and social rights than her husband – to go to the Second Continental Congress and write the Declaration of Independence, which declared, “All Men Are Created Equal,” and that “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” were unalienable Rights. He took his horse – cared for by his slaves – and rode across land that had been forcefully taken from indigenous people. In the end, only about 5% of adults could vote, only people just like the men in Independence Hall in 1776.

How quickly our forefathers lost the all-encompassing perspective that was clear to them from the lower levels of the British hierarchy, when they fought for independence from the top. Hierarchies are easiest to see by “lower” people who must use ingenuity and creativity to adjust to decisions and policies not designed with their desires, perspectives, and needs in mind. Life for “lower” people is very different from life at the top, where history, isolation, and rationalizations allow “higher” people to support, strengthen, and not question the system that channels advantages their way.

I believe that right now we in the United States are at an exciting fork in the road. We can go one of two directions.

In one direction, we continue to follow the vision of equality, life, liberty, and happiness of our forefathers, looking UP to people on top of our hierarchies to lead us. With little or no experience with the adverse effects of hierarchies, our leaders will continue to hand out a few changes to help “those people over there,” while they can rationalize that a system that brought them power and wealth is equally available to everyone else too. President Bush gives us a clear vision of that option.

In the second direction, we continue to follow the vision of equality, life, liberty, and happiness of our forefathers, but we look OUT of our hierarchies, not UP. We find leaders who embrace their personal experience with the problems hierarchies create, already know how to creatively solve problems with few resources in a system not working for them, and are motivated to find solutions that work for everyone, not just for those at the top.

The joy of feeling real, human, caring, and alive was all over the smiles of the leadership of New York when David Paterson spoke. We saw a clear vision of the second fork in the road. As he did not deny his personal understanding of the problems hierarchies create, Mr. Paterson said, “I have confronted the prejudices of race and challenged the issues of my disability." Able to creatively solve problems in a system not always working for him, Governor Paterson said, “We don’t know the path yet, but that’s because we haven’t blazed the trail, and I think you all know that I know a little bit about finding one’s way through the dark.” "Anyone can achieve no matter where they live," finds solutions for everyone, not just for those at the top.

David Paterson is not the only reason I am so optimistic. In 2008, we as a nation have again broken through our programming to follow the top of our hierarchies. Our belief that any viable candidate for president from one of our two major political parties has to be on the top of every powerful hierarchy – white, heterosexual, married, tall, slim, hair on one’s head, wealthy, speaks native “standard” English, Christian, no visible disabilities, educated in elite private schools, no history of mental illness, and male – is a thing of the past.

We are a wonderful country. What a marvelous, exciting time to be alive!

Harriet L. Childress, Ph.D.
author, Clueless at the Top

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Whose Creation Story?
Reprints used by permission only. Clueless at the Top. Harriet and Charlotte Childress.

Creationists who are pressuring the school board in Kansas or the Tulsa Zoo define their agenda as offering “alternative explanations” to evolution. Here’s a “scientific” experiment” created from the book, Clueless at the Top, that uncovers possible hidden objectives. Are they really building a hierarchy with themselves on top?

Imagine that American Indians who live near Topeka demand that the Kansas Board of Education teach their creation stories, or the many American Indians who live in Oklahoma demand that the Tulsa Zoo display their creation stories.

The tribes point out that Prairie Band Potawatomi, Iowa, Kickapoo, Sac, Fox, Choctaw, Delaware, Peoria, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Muskogee, and many, many other creation stories have been told on what’s now U.S. soil for thousands of years, while the first white settlers brought the Christian story to Kansas and Oklahoma less than two hundred years ago.

If creationists support the inclusion of all Kansas or Oklahoma creation stories equally, then their claim of “alternative explanations” is true. If they accept only the Christian story, then the creationists expose that they are using strategies typical of people who build hierarchies: People assume everyone wants and needs to be like them, and true intentions hide behind rhetoric and noble causes.

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Sexual Assault – Who Needs Fixing?
Reprints used by permission only. Clueless at the Top. Harriet and Charlotte Childress.

“No men . . . again" was likely the response of many of us when we read about the military's new sexual assault response program. The Boston Globe reported that:

Following an investigation that determined there were 142 reports of sexual assault at the Air Force Academy from 1993 to 2003, the Defense Department is adding sexual assault response coordinators and at least one victims advocate at every major base around the world. Personnel are given the option of having their identity shielded from commanders after reporting a sexual assault. The only other action reported was increasing information about how to obtain medical care, counseling and legal assistance following an assault.

How can we help males see themselves part of the solution? New research offers some important options for both the military and civilian life.

Different Views

Women tend to view instances of sexual assault as examples of a systemic problem. Many males, however, listen to stories of sexual assault and hear isolated cases of women who need education and support.

While it's tempting to attribute these differences to individuals, it's valuable to realize that these are consistent and predictable roles in any hierarchy – whether it is based on gender, race, sexual orientation, wealth, or other criteria. Hierarchies are easiest to see when viewed from lower levels [in this case, females] and are difficult to see from the top [in this case, males].

Role Change

For a reality check of what's truly fair and effective, let's create a role change – a technique that often uncovers elusive hierarchies.

From 1993 to 2003, the United States encountered 142 attacks from terrorists who assaulted school children. The primary response by the military was to establish a network of advocates for children and their families, give children the option to report the attacks anonymously, and provide information to schools about how to obtain services following an assault. If the program included efforts to stop the terrorists, it doesn't make the national news.

We've seen that military leaders can focus on perpetrators of violence when it's terrorists. With sexual assault, however, this role change uncovers an opposite strategy – more attention on victims of violence [females] than on perpetrators [males].

Common Language

All of us participate in hierarchies – most have the common experience of being higher in some and lower in others. Therefore, when people can't see the systemic hierarchies that create sexual assault, we can increase their awareness by pointing out the same political and social dynamics in another hierarchy they recognize.

We can use any of the thirty-two attitudes and behaviors that appear in most hierarchies. I'll use three to illustrate how characteristics that effect sexual assault programs also support other hierarchies.

Characteristic #1: Lower people need fixing.
• An article discusses "battered women's syndrome" but doesn't mention a "battering men's syndrome."
• A man whose hairline is receding buys hair-recovery drugs and lotions, and feels he can't leave home without his toupee.
• A teenage girl develops anorexia to "fix" her natural body. Her mother and aunts constantly talk about reducing diets.

Characteristic #2: People on the top are not accountable for the effects on lower groups.
• A police department's rape prevention program offers self-defense classes for females, but no classes for males.
• When a girl confronts her friend's homophobic comment, she is criticized by her peers.
• When the mother of a boy being bullied objects, her neighbors say her son just needs to toughen up, as "boys will be boys."

Characteristic #3: Our "problems" support hierarchies, so we'll have "problems" as long as we have hierarchies.
• A large number of unemployed/under-employed people is beneficial to a company looking to pay low wages.
• A governmental agency promotes drug sales in African-American neighborhoods to finance its own Central American military and espionage maneuvers.
• A United States president who launches a preemptive war depends on the belief that violence is a normal, necessary and manly way to deal with differences of opinion.

Alternatives

We can create effective solutions by reversing the specific hierarchical attitudes and behaviors we find. Here's some examples using the same three characteristics:

Alternative #1: Lower people are valuable resources.
The primary role of military women moves from victim to resource. The men are trained to and expected to ask for, listen to, and act on women's suggestions concerning what males can do to make the environment better for all. The results are assessed by both women and men (at least half women).

Alternative #2: People on the top are accountable for the effects on lower groups.
The military requires male staff at all levels to attend ongoing classes to reduce coercive and violent male behavior. A panel that includes a majority of females evaluates the results. Academy leaders publicly reward men who improve the culture for women and men.

Alternative #3: We remove the root, the source of our problems.
Professors use the academy's sexual assault program as a case study for engineering/technology design classes (which many cadets take). These classes teach students how to define a problem correctly so that their solution will actually solve the problem. Using engineering design principles, the students determine: Have we defined the problem correctly in our sexual assault program, and if not, what needs to be changed?

With a new common language of hierarchies, males and females have a powerful tool to work together to remove the root, the source of problems that keep cropping up all around us. We can show that when we follow the predictable rules and roles of hierarchies, we only create more hierarchy. A hierarchical frame confirms that focusing on females has not and will not solve the problem of sexual assault.

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