When To Blame a Group, or Not
A simple set of questions for assessing group culpability
Media and culture use moral equivalence against privileged groups on a regular basis, which often prompts discussions of moral equivalence itself. We get stuck in an endless debate about when, or even if, we should analyze events as group actions or individual actions.
This matters of course, because “you use different moves when you are fighting half a dozen people than when you only have to be worried about one.”
In fact, when discussing the long and quickening stream of terrorist attacks, this category error is the essential complaint of why we have failed to stop them: we insist on seeing the attacks as lone criminal acts.
On the whole, the Western nations do not like blaming groups. It goes against post-modern relativism that has infected our intellectual discourse for over 50 years. (I’ll have a piece up on that tomorrow. UPDATE: one of the things I love about Medium, I can add links later.)
Americans in particular — individualists that we are — don’t like assigning group culpability. We might demure that we can find bad apples in every group — a statement worthy of the reply, “duh” — and shouldn’t allow the actions of a few bad actors to influence our view of the entire group.
Still, there are times when group culpability is appropriate. I use a five question test.
- When was the act done? Centuries ago or last week?
- Who is doing the act? A leader of the group or a follower?
- How many are doing the act? A large group or an individual?
- What is the nature and magnitude of the act? Words or violence? A slap or a slit throat?
- And how do other members of the larger group respond? With silence, condemnation, or celebration? Calls to imitate or to cease?
The general analysis is not original to me. It is basic logic put to use in real world situations. I see it used often and sub consciously in commentary. This morning, TA Frank in Vanity Fair, answered many of these questions in his analsysis of political violence in America.
The range of possible combinations is large, but it is easy to see a scale from a lone-wolf, random citizen reading an offensive limerick to a group of friendlies who voice their disapproval afterward and counsel him to never read it again, to a council of respected elders inciting many followers to kill innocents, after which they are then cheered and copied while disapproving members remain silent. The lone wolf is just that in the former example, but we would be quite justified in seeing group responsibility in the latter.
And where there is group culpability we do need to see it, otherwise we might spend years using the wrong moves and wondering why the problem only gets worse.
Another and longer version of this article appeared in The Federalist in January 2015.
