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The Dignitarian Worldview
The dignitarian worldview sees “respect as a political category, not merely something to be sought after and struggled over in private life” (Simmons, 2020, p. 181). Someone who is narrating from the dignitarian worldview will understand that particular people might become disrespected in society based solely on their perceived and real membership in a particular affinity group, be it based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or otherwise.
The dignitarian worldview is made up of three sub-narratives, each of which presents a different permutation of the sentence “The Victim is abused by the Villain.”
- Recognition – “Undaunted Outgroups are disrespected by the Ignorant Masses.” (Dignitarian vs. Egalitarian)
- Liberation – “Undaunted Outgroups are disrespected by the Bad King.” (Dignitarian vs. Securitarian)
- Inclusion – “Undaunted Outgroups are disrespected by the Selfish Elites.” (Dignitarian vs. Libertarian)
Examples of the Recognition Narrative
Undaunted outgroups are disrespected by the ignorant masses.
Frantz Fanon
Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
Colonial racism is no different from other racisms. Anti-Semitism cuts me to the quick; I get upset; a frightful rage makes me anemic; they are denying me the right to be a man. I cannot dissociate myself from the fate reserved for my brother.
John Stuart Mill
On Liberty (1978)
Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Between the World and Me (2015)
I saw that what divided me from the world was not anything intrinsic to us but the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named us matters more than anything we could ever actually do.
Malcolm X (Malik el-Shabbaz)
Speech at the Ford Auditorium (February 14, 1965)
Why should the Black man in America concern himself—since he’s been away from the African continent for three or four hundred years—why should we concern ourselves? What impact does what happens to them have upon us? Number one, first you have to realize that up until 1959 Africa was dominated by the colonial powers. And by the colonial powers of Europe having complete control over Africa, they projected the image of Africa negatively. They projected Africa always in a negative light: jungles, savages, cannibals, nothing civilized. Why then naturally it was so negative [that] it was negative to you and me, and you and I began to hate it. We didn’t want anybody telling us anything about Africa, much less calling us Africans. In hating Africa and in hating the Africans, we ended up hating ourselves, without even realizing it. Because you can’t hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree. You can’t hate your origin and not end up hating yourself. You can’t hate Africa and not hate yourself.
Examples of the Liberation Narrative
Undaunted outgroups are disrespected by the bad king.
Frantz Fanon
Wretched of the Earth (1963)
National liberation, national reawakening, restoration of the nation to the people or Commonwealth, whatever the name used, whatever the latest expression, decolonization is always a violent event.
Elisabeth Burgos-Debray
In I Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (2010)
Rigoberta learned the language of her oppressors in order to use it against them. For her, appropriating the Spanish language is an act which can change the course of history because it is the result of a decision. Spanish was a language which forced upon her, but it has become a weapon in her struggle. She decided to speak in order to tell of the oppression her people have been suffering for almost five hundred years, so that the sacrifices made by her community and her family will not have been made in vain.
Nelson Mandela
“I am Prepared to Die: Nelson Mandela’s Statement from the Dock at the Opening of the Defence Case in the Rivonia Trial” (April 20, 1964)
Above all, My Lord, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary to the whites in this country, because the majority of voters will be Africans. This makes the white man fear democracy. But this fear cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the only solution which will guarantee racial harmony and freedom for all. It is not true that the enfranchisement of all will result in racial domination. Political division, based on colour, is entirely artificial and, when it disappears, so will the domination of one colour group by another. The ANC has spent half a century fighting against racialism. When it triumphs as it certainly must, it will not change that policy. This then is what the ANC is fighting. Our struggle is a truly national one.
Theodor Herzl
The Jewish State (1896/1989)
I think the Jewish question is no more a social than a religious one, notwithstanding that it sometimes takes these and other forms. It is a national question, which can only be solved by making it a political world-question to be discussed and settled by the civilized nations of the world in council.
Examples of the Inclusion Narrative
Undaunted outgroups are disrespected by the selfish elites.
Frantz Fanon
The Wretched of the Earth (1963)
The former colonial power increases its demands, accumulates concessions and guarantees and takes fewer and fewer pains to mask the hold it has over the national government. The people stagnate deplorably in unbearable poverty; slowly they awaken to the unutterable treason of their leaders. This awakening is all the more acute in that the bourgeoisie is incapable of learning its lesson. The distribution of wealth that it effects is not spread out between a great many sectors; it is not ranged among different levels, nor does it set up a hierarchy of halftones. The new caste is an affront all the more disgusting in that the immense majority, nine-tenths of the population, continue to die of starvation. The scandalous enrichment, speedy and pitiless, of this caste is accompanied by a decisive awakening on the part of the people, and a grow- ing awareness that promises stormy days to come.
Joan Williams
Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It (2001)
Domesticity remains the entrenched, almost unquestioned, American norm and practice. As a gender system, it has two defining characteristics. The first is its organization of market work around the ideal of a worker who works full time and overtime and takes little or no time off for childbearing or child rearing. Though this ideal-worker norm does not define all jobs today, it defines the good ones: full-time blue-collar jobs in the working-class context, and high-level executive and professional jobs for the middle class and above. When work is structured in this way, caregivers often cannot perform as ideal workers. Their inability to do so gives rise to domesticity’s second defining characteristic: its system of providing for caregiving by marginalizing the caregivers, thereby cutting them off from most of the social roles that offer responsibility and authority.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (April 16, 1963)
All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. To use the words of Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, segregation substitutes an ‘I – it’ relationship for the ‘I – thou’ relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. So segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Isn’t segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, an expression of his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? So I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court because it is morally right, and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances because they are morally wrong.
Nancy Fraser
“How Feminism Became Capitalism’s Handmaiden – and How to Reclaim It” (in The Guardian, October 14, 2013)
In a cruel twist of fate, I fear that the movement for women’s liberation has become entangled in a dangerous liaison with neoliberal efforts to build a free-market society. That would explain how it came to pass that feminist ideas that once formed part of a radical worldview are increasingly expressed in individualist terms. Where feminists once criticised a society that promoted careerism, they now advise women to ‘lean in’. A movement that once prioritised social solidarity now celebrates female entrepreneurs. A perspective that once valorised ‘care’ and interdependence now encourages individual advancement and meritocracy.
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