Of
the many psychological disorders afflicting visible minorities,
none is more unforgiving than self-hatred. To know oneself
as self-hating can be an unbearable humiliation from which
there is often no escape – other than self-deception.
Belgium
surrealist René Magritte has a painting of a man who
looks into the mirror and sees the back of his head. The self-hating
are of this ilk.
So
overwhelming are the feelings associated with self-hatred
that even among themselves the self-hating cannot speak of
it. Unlike the thief who cries hunger, or the rapist provocation,
the self-hater has no recourse because he refuses to admit
to his condition. For this reason, being self-hating is arguably
the most incarcerating of psychological states. Unable to
forge meaningful links with the world at large, the self-hater
retreats into the solipsistic world of his minority group,
only to find himself condemned to face feelings more powerful
and obdurate than his powers of understanding. Every effort
to escape himself (to become invisible), like the man trying
to lose his shadow, meets with failure. The accumulated frustration
takes its toll. The self-hater evolves a gait and grammar
singular to his anguish and impotence; and a patent smile
that conceals a not-so-secret death wish. Is it any wonder
the self-hating end up contracting their ‘Weltanshauung’
(world view) into an ‘us’ and ‘them?’
Like
enfeebled lungs to an oxygen tank, the self-hating, desperate
to lose themselves in the sea of their own kind, reflexively
congregate to insulate themselves against the intolerance
which gives rise to self-hatred, only to discover that the
community which makes it possible for them to enjoy invisibility,
as it consolidates and expands, ironically gains in visibility,
and becomes an even easier target for all sorts of misguided
but often lethal accusation.
It
comes as no surprise that the positive tolerance practiced
among like-members of minorities is inversely proportionate
to the intolerance practiced against them. Thus, the Jews,
as history’s most notoriously persecuted minority, are
probably the most self-hating as well as mutually supportive,
a development that partially redeems the stereotype of ghettos
that thrive as safe zones for the self-hating.
AUTHENTIC
AND INAUTHENTIC SELF-HATRED
If
the etiology of self-hatred remains obscure, it is because
the afflicted have been stubbornly unwilling to admit to,
much less speak about, their sickness of being. And of the
few that do come out, unlike gays, it is not to celebrate
their condition but to overcome it, only to discover that
the road to self-esteem is not only a straight, up-hill climb,
but it has almost disappeared from view, so untravelled is
it.
Self-hatred
is not a nightmare from which one suddenly awakens. It is
a war of attrition against a negative self-image that requires
nothing less than a complete interrogation of one’s
core assumptions and values. And even this may not be enough.
The bitter roots of self-hatred often extend to long forgotten
or repressed childhood experiences.
Of
the self-hating there are three types. Type A’s self-hatred
is externally caused. It is a consequences of intolerance
practiced against him as an individual of a minority or his
minority as an entity. He comes to hate himself because others
hate him. Type A has no self, is hostage to public perception
and is ‘inauthentic’ in his being. Most self-haters
are Type As.
Type
B’s self-hatred is ‘authentic’ because he
is the source. He comes to hate himself as a member of a minority
because it espouses beliefs or principles with which he disagrees.
A minority member who rejects his group’s derogation
of women may come to deplore his membership in that group.
He can then decide to either attempt to modify the principles
of his group, or convert to another whose values are more
commensurate with his own, or forgo altogether belonging to
a group. A Muslim’s conversion to Catholicism is authentic
when after having interrogated his own values he concludes
they coincide with those of Catholicism. The conversion is
inauthentic when the Muslim, self-hating as a consequence
of intolerance, converts merely to be relieved of his self-hatred.
The ideal member of a minority would be so constituted that
he would choose to become a member of that group if he were
not already one. A group that forbids free association, or
restricts membership, may cultivate authentic self-hating
members for those very reasons.
The
virus of self-hatred thrives where visible members gather
to become invisible. In particular, it preys on the young.
All
youngsters seek approval; their behaviour is conditioned by
reward and punishment. When a youngster discovers he is disliked
(intolerated) for being a member of a minority, he will ‘reflexively’
attempt to modify himself to win approval. When he rudely
learns he cannot change his pigmentation, ethnic or religious
affiliation, his only recourse is to turn to his imaginative
faculties, and with ‘impunity’ yearn ‘not
to be’ what he is. In this yearning, self-hatred is
born, drawing its first breath for perhaps the life-time to
come. Experiencing it as only a youngster can – in the
full force of the present – he will go to great lengths
to avoid situations which provoke self-hatred and collateral
feelings of powerlessness and low self-esteem. It is no surprise
that youngsters of minorities band together to insulate themselves
from unlike members.
But
the youngster, the hapless heir to his parents’ or community’s
negative self-image, is not responsible for his self-hatred.
He does not choose to be born into his ethnic or racial group.
He does not choose to be self-hating, the reflexive, unconscious
response to intolerance. Lacking the cognitive maturity to
expose the false claims of self-hatred, it is all too predictable
that youngsters subjected to intolerance become self-hating.
That they are condemned to grow up feeling ashamed of themselves
is surely regrettable, but never shameful.
The
adult, however, is existentially responsible for who he is.
In exercising free choice, the self-hating adult ‘chooses’
to remain in self-hatred because he chooses to leave the question
of his self-hatred unexamined. He persuades himself that if
he ignores or denies the condition it will simply go away
– a wishful thinking that leads him to seek out his
own cloistered kind, but at the expense of a world that is
reduced to his blinkered conception of it. So in turning away
from self-hatred, which is always a turning toward self-deception,
the adult is forever haunted by it. All the major decisions
of his life, his choice of career, his social milieu are informed
by his negative self-image.
That
there is a symmetrical cause and effect relationship between
career success and high self-esteem predicts that a disproportionate
number of minority members will achieve 'exceptional' career
success to compensate for 'exceptionally' low self-esteem.
Type C emerges with a split-personality: he remains self-hating
as a consequences of intolerance, but he is also self-esteeming
as a consequence of career success. The newer self, now much
admired and rewarded for his accomplishments, may discover
that the self-esteem conferred by a successful career provides
such lasting relief from self-hatred, he may take to it (his
work) like a drug – a disguised death-wish. In his obsession
to vanquish the self-hater he is, he is driven to achieve
exceptional career success (often inconsiderate of health
and family). And if at the end of the day he is handsomely
rewarded for his industry, the twisted motivation that is
at the root of his resourcefulness remains hidden and of no
practical interest to society at large.
How
then do we judge the self-hater who has achieved great career
success which allows him to be self-esteeming? He may believe
himself to be de facto free from the shackles of
self-hatred, but his self-esteem is at best problematic since
it doesn't originate from within: he is still very much hostage
to public opinion. The activity which he believes allows him
to work out his self-hatred is instead a direct effect of
it. And no matter how masterfully carried out, it always proceeds
from what he is – self-hating.
In
certain individuals, self-hatred is so unbearable the victim
resorts to what he would normally regard as unconscionable
conduct in order to deliver himself from the milieu he erroneously
holds responsible for his self-loathing. If quiet defection
to another group is the least offensive public expression
of self-hatred, its ugly and not uncommon counterpart has
the self-hater transferring his private self-hatred to his
group as a whole. In denouncing his own group, he instead
becomes the author of intolerance – a practice by which
he hopes to disassociate himself from his minority identity
-- only to discover that he cannot run away from himself,
while becoming a source of shame and embarrassment to his
group as a whole.
A
more acceptable means of coping is for minority members to
inure themselves against intolerance through the mechanism
of the ethnic huddle. In small groups, ethnics gather together
and playfully mock their own cultural characteristics. In
an atmosphere calculated to induce catharsis, they invoke
the epithets and pejoratives by which the group is negatively
identified. These self-inflicted blows, many of which are
delivered with humour, serve the purpose of toughening up
the minority’s fragile psyche, so when these same slurs
are received from the outside, they will have less impact
on the now callused self-hater. (Afro Americans invoking the
‘n’-word ad nauseam). However therapeutically
beneficial is the ethnic huddle in providing some immunity
against intolerance, its origins are inauthentic because it
does not address the causes of self-hatred. Self-hatred is
authentic only when it is self-directed.
________________
With
the 21st century already upon us, two demographic trends are
very much in evidence: unprecedented world-wide migration
and significantly higher birth rates among immigrants and
refugees, which predict that minority groups will occupy an
increasing percentage of any host country’s population;
and that the self-hatred that uniquely afflicts visible minorities
will continue to thrive unchecked unless community leaders
finally grant the problem the severity it deserves. As long
as ethnic communities continue to serve as island fortresses
or places of refuge for the self-hating, the damage done is
only going to get worse.
If minority communities are to find their place in the sun,
they must find the will to purge themselves of what is inauthentic
in their self-definition in order to create values around
which individuals gather wilfully and enthusiastically, where
adults can be healed and the young taught to be whole. This
presupposes that the virus of self-hated has been identified
and its crippling effects brought into the open, a daunting
challenge whose success or failure bears directly on the social
health of any host country.
