Graduation Date
1992
Document Type
Thesis
Program
Master of Arts degree with a major in Sociology
Committee Chair Name
Dr. Samuel P. Oliner
Committee Chair Affiliation
Cal Poly Humboldt Faculty or Staff
Second Committee Member Name
Dr. Jack Shaffer
Third Committee Member Name
Dr. John Gai
Keywords
Sociology
Subject Categories
Sociology
Abstract
This work is divided into five sections, the first being the Introduction. In Section II, shame, perpetrators, bystanders, victims and survivors are defined at length. Chapter 1, entitled, Shame Defined, differentiates between embarrassment, guilt and shame. In Healing the Shame that Binds You, John Bradshaw (1988) describes shame: It is like internal bleeding. Exposure to oneself lies at the heart of toxic shame. A shame-based person will guard against exposing his inner self to others, but more significantly, he will guard against exposing himself to himself. Toxic shame is so excruciating because it is the painful exposure of the believed failure of self to the self. In toxic shame the self becomes an object of its own contempt, an object that can’t be trusted. As an object that can’t be trusted, one experiences oneself as untrustworthy. Toxic shame is experienced as an inner torment, a sickness of the soul. If I'm an object that can't be trusted, then I’m not in me. Toxic shame is paradoxical and selfgenerating. There is shame about shame. People will readily admit guilt, hurt or fear before they will admit shame. Toxic shame is the feeling of being isolated and alone in a complete sense. A shamebased person is haunted by a sense of absence and emptiness. (p. 10) Chapter 2, The White and Black Sides of Shame, addresses shame resulting from slavery, racism, and imperialism. Kincaid (1988) articulates the disturbing, damaging, and long-term effects of slavery so well, that it is difficult to resist quoting her at length: Have you ever wondered to yourself why it is that all people like me seem to have learned from you is how to imprison and murder each other, how to govern badly, and how to take the wealth of our country and place it in Swiss bank accounts? Have you ever wondered why it is that all we seem to have learned from you is how to corrupt our societies and how to be tyrants? You will have to accept that this is mostly your fault. Let me just show you how you looked to us. You came. You took things that were not yours, and you did not even, for appearance’s sake, ask first. You could have said, "May I have this, please?” and even though it would have been clear to everybody that a yes or no from us would have been of no consequence you might have looked so much better. Believe me, it would have gone a long way. I would have had to admit that at least you were polite. You murdered people. You robbed people. You opened your own banks and you put our money in them. The accounts were in your name. The banks were in your name. There must have been some good people among you, but they stayed home. And that is the point. That is why they are good. They stayed home. But still, when you think about it, you must be a little sad. The - people like me, finally, after years and years of agitation, made deeply moving and eloquent speeches against the wrongness of your domination over us, and then finally, after the mutilated bodies of you, your wife, and your children were found in your beautiful and spacious bungalow at the edge of your rubber plantation--found by one of your many house servants (none of it was ever yours; it was never, ever yours)—you say to me, "Well, I wash my hands of all of you, I am leaving now,” and you leave, and from afar you watch as we do to ourselves the very things you used to do to us. And you might feel that there was more to you than that, you might feel that you had understood the meaning of the Age of Enlightenment (though, as far as I can see, it had done you very little good); you loved knowledge, and wherever you went you made sure to build a school, a library (yes, and in both of these places you distorted or erased my history and glorified your own). But then again, perhaps as you observe the debacle in which I now exist, the utter ruin that I say is my life, perhaps you are remembering that you had always felt people like me cannot run things, people like me will never grasp the idea of Gross National Product, people like me will never be able to take command of the thing the most simpleminded among you can master, people like me will never understand the notion of rule by law, people like me cannot really think in abstractions, people like me cannot be objective, we make everything so personal. You will forget your part in the whole setup, that bureaucracy is one of your inventions, and all the laws that you know mysteriously favour you. Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, it’s because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital, like bales of cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were the commanding, cruel capitalists, and the memory of this so strong, the experience so recent, that we can't quite bring ourselves to embrace this idea that you think so much of. As for what we were like before we met you, I no longer care. No periods of time over which my ancestors held sway, no documentation of complex civilisations, is any comfort to me. Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you. (pp. 34-37) Chapter 3, The Shaming of Puerto Ricans and Other Hispanics, points out the strangling effects of colonization, racism, and violence. Both my mother and father were born in Puerto Rico. My father also has family roots in the Canary Islands and Martinique; my mother has family roots in Haiti as well. In my conversations with people during my travels, and in my daily encounters, I have noted that not everyone knows where Puerto Rico is nor of its political status. In The First Book of Puerto Rico, Antonio J. Colorado (1978) provides some geographical information: On a map Puerto Rico looks like a rough rectangle. It is the smallest and the most easterly of the four islands that make up the Greater Antilles. The others are Hispañola (which includes the Dominican Republic and Haiti) Cuba, and Jamaica. Puerto Rico is about 100 miles long and 35 miles wide. It is pounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the north and lapped by the Caribbean Sea on the south. (p. 35) Although not born in Puerto Rico I have a strong sense of my cultural heritage. Spanish was the first language I learned. It is the language my parents and I express ourselves in when we interact and communicate. Yet, I must admit that acknowledging and retaining my Puerto Rican/Taino Indian heritage has not been easy. The island is a colony of the United States. And what message does that give the world--that the people on the island and the sons and daughters of those islanders are inept and incapable of making decisions, of handling their lives? I am thirty-three years old and feel like I still have a baby sitter—the United States--telling me and my family what to do. Yet, there is a tale told that the United States is a democracy--a land of the free. And I cannot solely accuse the United States of perpetration. I must also question all of the other countries which silently watch as Puerto Rico continues to be oppressed. This is not new. Like the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico was originally inhabited by the peaceful Taino Indians. However, for 500 years Puerto Ricans have suffered from the claws of indecent, inhumane, and greedy colonizers. In his work, Puerto Rico: Equality and Freedom at Issue, Juan M. Garcia-Passalacqua (1984) describes the situation in Puerto Rico: The story of Puerto Rico is that of Spanish and U.S. colonialism. The U.S. reader may resent this classification. The people of the United States and its government do not believe that the United States has colonies. They understand the term as inconsistent with what the United States believes to be its own traditions and way of being. Yet it is a truth that must be accepted if the reader wants to understand Puerto Rico. The people of Puerto Rico are still in a formative stage. They have undergone several stages of becoming. They have made and unmade themselves in reaction to events that have occurred beyond their shores and that have been decided by others. Their understanding of themselves has had to depend on how they have been seen and treated by metropolitan governments. Their goals, if any, have become piecemeal and contradictory as they react, not act. In the Caribbean colonial context, the "ideal" is always unattainable and has been limited by whatever the metropolis has in store. This tension between the metropolis and the islanders defines the issue of Puerto Rico. (p. 2) Puerto Ricans are not the only Hispanics who suffered and continue to suffer from assaults by perpetrators. Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer (1990) identifies the United States as perpetrator and Central America as victim in War Against the Poor: Low-Intensity Conflict and Christian Faith: The statements and position papers of U.S. policymakers when examined in light of my own experience and through the eyes of the poor have led me to disturbing, even frightening conclusions. I have come to believe that low- intensity conflict is for the United States a global strategy of warfare waged against the poor. Neatly packaged for public consumption, low-intensity conflict is like a deadly bomb wrapped with beautiful paper. It couples the use of explicit terror with rhetoric about “freedom," "democracy," and "national interest." When the wrapping paper is removed one sees how the unbearable suffering of the vast majority of people in Central America is the fruit of a calculated policy in defense of U.S. privilege. (p. xi) Nelson-Pallmeyer (1990) defines low-intensity conflict as an evolving strategy of counterrevolutionary warfare: It is the nuts-and-bolts means by which the United States is fighting a series of "limited wars" and projecting "power into the Third World." A counterrevolutionary superpower in a world of massive structural inequalities, the United States is actively engaged in a global war against the poor. "As the leading 'have' power," General Maxwell Taylor predicted in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, "we may expect to have to fight to protect our national valuables against envious ’have nots.'" The defense of U.S. "national interests" or our "national valuables" necessarily conflicts with the needs of the poor whose hope for a dignified future, including freedom from misery, can be realized only in a world of greater social justice. (pp. 1-2)
Recommended Citation
Rodriquez-Lopez, Maribal, "Death, Loss, and Grief Work" (1992). Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects. 2461.
https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/etd/2461