Nobody Knows
Robert Fuller on how the abuse of rank damages community

Interview by SHARA CHOI
Contributing Writer

Dr. Robert W. Fuller invented a new word 10 years ago in hopes of opening society’s eyes to the evils of all of the typical isms, including but not limited to racism, sexism, and ageism. He defines “rankism” as abuse, discrimination, or exploitation based on rank and abusive, discriminatory, or exploitative behavior towards people who have less power because of their lower rank in a particular hierarchy. Rankism gives society a term to use when they feel that the inequality of rank in social class makes one person feel like a “nobody.” The goal, he says, is for every person to be treated with dignity regardless of social standing.

Fuller was always drawn to situations where he felt that one group was disadvantaged compared to another. A former professor of physics who rose to be dean of his alma mater, Oberlin College, Fuller has had several moments over his lifetime where he was either a “somebody” or a “nobody.” He’s coming to Seattle to read from his second book on rankism — this one focused on building a “dignitarian” society — on Thurs., June 11. He spoke with Real Change last month on recognizing rankism and demanding dignity.

Real Change: What is rankism?

Robert Fuller: Rank itself is not a problem. It’s the abuse of rank that is the problem. We don’t mind movie stars who have high ranks, unless they go around acting like divas. It’s power that controls it.

All the isms are rankism. Everybody can identify with the idea of somebodies and nobodies because almost all of us have been both, in one context or another. Rankism is always visited upon the weak. Their weakness derives from poorness, color, gender, or disability, and in every case, they are just excuses for preying on the weak. And I don’t think it’s any more legitimate than preying on people of color or people with disabilities, and I want to disallow it: make it unacceptable, make it uncool. That’s the goal.

So how do we know when rank is being abused? What constitutes the abuse of rank?

People are tuned to detect the slightest hint of indignity when it comes their way. The reason for that is our ancestors many generations back who missed the signals of indignity were soon eaten for lunch. You have to pick up on the fact when someone is trying to maneuver you into a role of servitude where they can prey on you. It’s human nature.

On the other hand, all of us hate it completely with every molecule we have in our bodies. We hate being bullied and indignified; therefore we detect it quickly. We gradually learn, over years and centuries sometimes, how to organize with other people to prevent it. A tremendous step forward was when we learned how to limit the power of kings. That was the birth of democracy. Now, in the schools of America, we’re going through a heightened awareness about bullying and its dangers.

Even girls turn out to be bullies in a subtler way — the film Mean Girls shows that. Rosalind Wiseman wrote a terrific book called Queen Bees and Wannabes, which the film was based on. She pointed out that bullying and rankism is not something that just males do — females do it too, but in somewhat subtler ways. Now, everywhere in the country people are getting more alert to this. It won’t be long before bullying is very rare in American schools, I’m sure of it. We can learn how to overcome a king, a schoolyard bully, a corporate executive who is embezzling the company’s money, or an abusive priest. We can organize against it, but it sometimes takes us centuries, usually at least decades, but we do figure out how to do it and then we stop it, and then it becomes rare instead of commonplace.

You can imagine sexual abuse in the Catholic Church must have been nearly universal 100 years ago. Now we’re alert to it and so it’s getting very risky for these guys. It’s soon going to be impossible to get away with it. We make progress.

RC: Was there a significant moment in your life that turned you onto this term, rankism?

Fuller: I suppose that grew out of my involvement in the ’60s and ’70s with the other isms. I was battling all of them in the role of college president. The students were my allies in this battle, the opponents were other administrators and entrenched faculty, who were against opening the gates of higher education to people of color and others.

Then, after I left my position of pretty high status, I noticed I was treated like a nobody. I realized how much I had been protected from that kind of abuse by my title. I also felt the profound similarity of abusing people because of their weakness and abusing them because they were Black, female, gay or something else — there was really no difference. None of it is pardonable. If we’re going to disallow racism, we should disallow the more general thing that causes it, which is rankism. So I invented this word so we’d have a name for all of the different kinds of abuse and discrimination. Every one of the isms is based on a power difference, as expressed usually in our difference of rank.

When I was a kid, whites enjoyed social ranks over Blacks. It is a tremendous change we’ve made for the better in America and in a lot of other countries. It turns out that America is not so bad at overcoming things like racism and sexism. It looks bad in the short run within our country, but when you get out in the world, you see how much worse it is everywhere else. We, as a country, are leaders in that, and I have hope that we can take on rankism and do to it like we did to racism and sexism. I think we can do this because I find that young people instantly get this because they are all chronically nobodied, and they know exactly what I’m talking about.

RC: So, has racism gone away in our society?

Fuller: No. [Racism and other isms] don’t go away overnight, they attenuate; they get weaker. The best way to see this is to look into your own family history. When I go back to my great grandparents, I see overt, out-and-out proud racists. When I look at my grandparents, I see them being a little coy about it. My own parents did not use racial slurs, at least not around me and my two brothers, and accordingly, we didn’t even think of using them. My children date interracially, and my grandchildren won’t even know what this fuss was all about. That’s six generations; it takes time. But over six generations, there has been a tremendous shift in consciousness. It’s just when we look in a single generation, we say that we haven’t made any progress.

Or we say that people haven’t really changed, they’re just repressing all their nasty thoughts. Exactly! That’s just what they’re doing; that’s what anyone my age has to do. I was brought up in a totally racist America, and if I didn’t repress the things that I learned when I was 7 and 10, then I would be as bad as they were! But you learn to repress these things and the good thing is that your kids don’t pick them up. Political correctness, although it is a pain in the neck, serves a very valuable function: It trains the next generation.

RC: What sort of role does economic inequality play in rankism?

Fuller: A tremendous role. By keeping people locked in poverty, we can exploit them because they have to conform to our wishes or they’ll lose their paycheck. Then they would starve because they don’t have any savings. Therefore, poverty is the modern form of slavery. Jim Wallis, author of God’s Politics, came up with the phrase “poverty is the new slavery,” and I think he’s absolutely right. It locks you into a subordination where you can be exploited.

I’m not saying that everybody should be paid the same amount, either. There are people who have trained for decades to get certain skills, but I don’t think that the gaps should be as wide as they are. If you look at the rest of the developed world, the gap between the CEO’s salary and the janitor’s salary is rarely more than a factor of 10. In this country, it’s 500. Anything more than 10 times is rankism. It’s rank serving its own purposes, instead of serving shareholders, employees, and customers.

Among the homeless, you have people of every stripe. You can’t say that homelessness is due to racism because there’s plenty of rich Blacks and homeless whites. It’s just like Katrina. People were trying to say that it was racism when it was really rankism. People who weren’t evacuated in Katrina weren’t chosen based on race, but on rank: They were chosen according to their power in society. Everyone who had money got out, and in good time.

Robert W. Fuller reads from All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity on Tues., July 11, at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave. Tickets are $5.