Summary
Each of these are examples of what author Robert Fuller calls "rankism," which he defines as "discrimination or exploitation based on rank." All around us, he says, a powerful "somebody" is bullying a "nobody."
More depressing-and telling-is Schafer's finding that children become more supportive of cruelty over time. After six years, she writes, "In contrast to the bullies' relative lower standing during elementary school, they had actually become very popular with their classmates." Meanwhile, the victims "got few sympathy points. ... Their peers acted as if they were not there or responded with outright rejection and whispered behind their backs. The bullies escalated this game, insulting and making fun of them. Many of the target children came to identify with the underdog role." The longer this went on, she notes, the more isolated the victims became.Contrary to Fuller's claim that rankism is bad for the corporate bottom line, the research on its effects on employees shows that it may not hurt productivity. Like schoolchildren, workers are more likely to appease a bully than to confront him. "Many abused subordinates continue to perform at high levels," [Bennett Tepper] writes in an e-mail interview. "They do so because they believe that they have no choice (i.e., they have little mobility and believe that low performance will elicit further abuse or, possibly, termination)."See the full content of this document
Extract
The Power of Mean
A nine-year-old girl in England feels ugly and wants to kill herself because her schoolmates call her "Blackie." A legal assistant in Oregon is terrorized by an autocratic boss who screams obscenities in her face and refuses to give her time off for surgery. An 80-year-old man finds himself at the mercy of abusive nurses at a convalescent home. A teenager is molested by his parish priest.
Each of these are examples of what author Robert Fuller calls "rankism," which he...See the full content of this document
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