Dr. Maya Rockeymoore is the former vice president of research and programs at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. She is author of The Political Action Handbook: A How-To Guide for the Hip Hop Generation and co-editor of Strengthening Communities: Social Insurance in a Diverse America.
Tom Cruise, where are you when we need you? The American people are being fed a psychotropic substance that has dangerous, perception-altering side effects, and few seem to be taking a stand. More damaging than antidepressants, this substance is the glib rhetoric of personal responsibility. Political elites use it to hide their efforts to dismantle democratic, labor and civil rights in the United States.
Those in power figured out long ago that by manipulating symbols and stereotypes to invoke feelings of blame, shame and deservedness, they are able to control and subjugate the public for the purpose of achieving their own narrow goals. Unfortunately, many Americans buy into this rhetorical game without even realizing that they are being manipulated to support objectives that, in many instances, work against their own self-interests.
The rhetoric of personal responsibility has gained favor as a modern political tool in direct response to the achievements of the civil rights movement and the War on Poverty. The prevailing morality of the late 1960s and ‘70s—which accepted that the power of the federal government should be expanded to protect minorities from racial discrimination and provide the poor with a stronger safety net—constrained conservatives. In response, they updated their traditional ethos of rugged individualism as a way to challenge claims on government without being construed as racist or classist.
The updated version tells individuals that they will do well if they work hard and don’t ask for or rely on help from society. When you look at how the rhetoric of personal responsibility is deployed, however, it becomes clear that race and class biases are at the very heart of this tactic.
The discussion of civil rights best exposes the insidious nature of the personal responsibility argument. In the debate on affirmative action, for example, African Americans are told they should be ashamed to rely on race-based government quotas or set-asides as a way to get ahead in education or business. They should, the argument goes, instead pull themselves up by their own bootstraps—presumably like everyone else—to make strides toward achieving the American dream.
The fallacy of this argument is this: If an African American succeeds in a policy environment where affirmative action exists, the credit goes to the federal program and not to his or her own innate talents. First, this argument erroneously presumes that talent and opportunity cannot co-exist. Second, this argument is damaging because it forces those who abide by its logic—African Americans and others—to ignore or downplay the history of racial oppression that gave rise to the creation of the policy in the first place. And, through a rhetorical sleight of hand, they are expected to assume that all is now equal—when nothing could be further from the truth.
The reality is that the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow remain embedded in the social, political, economic and cultural institutions of the United States. They continue to operate in ways that systematically limit and even imperil the life chances of many African Americans. Yet from welfare and health to education and housing, conservatives have deployed the psychology of personal responsibility to obscure the continued role of U.S. institutions in perpetuating unequal racial outcomes.
Conservatives use this approach to roll back civil rights and War on Poverty gains and to delegitimize low-income or minority citizens’ claims on government. And the ultimate goal? Shifting scarce resources to meet elite priorities.
Given their moderate tactical success in shifting the terms of the civil rights debate, conservative political leaders are now showing their willingness to be equal-opportunity manipulators in the current debate on retirement security. Indeed, President Bush’s Ownership Society platform, which includes Social Security reform, has proven to be the latest twist in the personal responsibility script.
No longer content to use negative reinforcements like shame and guilt to achieve its political and policy ends, the White House is peddling a more nuanced approach. The Bush administration wants to shift the economic burden of retirement security away from government and corporations onto individuals by appealing to Americans’ upwardly mobile aspirations. In this formulation, citizens are offered the “opportunity” to own individual accounts that will purportedly enable them to wrest control of their own money from government for the purpose of building wealth.
Never mind that conservative, liberal and independent analyses document that this approach will prove more expensive, more risky and less efficient than the current Social Security program. The end goal is to use the rhetoric of personal responsibility/reward as an excuse to dismantle the federal program designed to make old age annuities, disability and survivor insurance affordable and accessible for all working-class Americans.
How is it that we have come to accept the rhetoric of personal responsibility from those who display little personal or social responsibility themselves? Indeed, an ultimate and dangerous sign that America is reverting back to a government for elites, by elites—similar to the plutocracy enjoyed by the Founding Fathers—is that those in power get to dictate what the rank and file are able to have or do—while they avail themselves of the very things they deny others.
If the doctrine of personal responsibility declares that it is not acceptable to use the powers of government to alleviate poverty or the effects of racial discrimination, why does it allow corporate welfare in the form of multi-billion dollar sole-source government contracts to wealthy corporations and trillion-dollar federal tax rebates to wealthy individuals and companies? Because those who use the rhetoric of personal responsibility as a political tool believe that government help is ok—as long as it isn’t being used to support populations they despise.
Ultimately, Tom Cruise may have a point. It is well advised that Americans wean themselves from the perception-distorting and mood-altering substance of contemporary political rhetoric. We are in a fundamental struggle for the soul of our democracy. But if the people lose, it will be because we allowed ourselves to be the victims of a massive psych job perpetuated by political spin doctors.
