Robert W. Fuller: Time for accepting rankism has passed

The basic tenet of a dignitarian - in contrast to an egalitarian - society is that although we are unequal in rank, we are equal in dignity. The goal of a dignitarian society is to structure our personal relations and our social institutions so that the powers inherent in rank are not abused and human dignity is universally protected.
In the last half of the 20th century we learned to look at society through the lens of colour. What we saw was the injustice of racism.

Similarly, when we looked through the lens of gender, we saw the inequities of sexism. Looking through the lens of rank is no less illuminating and transformative.

Whether your title reads prime minister or citizen, boss or employee, doctor or patient, teacher or pupil, rank defines your authority. When it's a badge of excellence, rank is not a problem.

On the contrary, we admire and emulate those who've earned their rank and exercise the power it signifies to serve their employees, students, patients or fellow citizens. But when those with higher rank use their power to intimidate or exploit those of lower rank, we're speaking not of rank, but of its abuse.

We don't have a ready name for rank-based abuse, but it needs one. When abuse and discrimination are race-based, we call it racism; when they're gender-based, we call it sexism. By analogy, abuse of the power inherent in rank is "rankism". Looking at society through the lens of rank reveals the indignities resulting from rankism.

Rankism is the illegitimate use of rank, and, equally, the use of rank illegitimately acquired or held. When the high-ranking aggrandise themselves at the expense of subordinates, that's rankism.

It's the opposite of service. Good leaders eschew rankism; bad ones indulge in it. When leaders are perceived by subordinates as condoning rankism, it spreads like a virus through the ranks. Photos of the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by their guards exposed the arrogant face of rankism to the world.

Like other forms of discrimination, rankism occurs at both interpersonal and institutional levels. When a boss harasses an employee or a teacher humiliates a student, that's interpersonal rankism.

"Somebodies" with higher rank and more power in a particular setting can maintain an environment that is hostile and demeaning to "nobodies" with lower rank and less power in that setting, much as most everywhere whites used to be at liberty to mistreat people of colour.

Examples of institutional rankism include corporate corruption, sexual abuse by clergy, elder abuse, and the undue political influence of special-interest groups.

At the societal level, rank-based discrimination afflicts none more inescapably than those lacking the protections of social rank - the working poor.

Recent research on social class and its connections to morbidity and mortality suggest the chronic rankism endured by the poor is as harmful to health as smoking three-and-a-half packets of cigarettes a day.

People with assets know that they are the foundation on which their personal freedom rests. The working poor typically lack the sense of security that equity and capital afford those that have them.

While a dignitarian society would not compensate everyone equally, everyone would be paid well enough to experience a life of dignity. A society that provides health care to some but not to others is not dignitarian. Neither is a society in which access to a quality education is dependent on wealth.

In the 21st century, overcoming rankism is at once a moral goal and a practical necessity. Building dignitarian societies that disallow rankism in all its guises is democracy's next evolutionary step.

* Robert W. Fuller taught at Columbia University and served as the president of Oberlin College. He is the author of Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank.