Playing The Victim
Playing the victim. Something that we’ve all probably done, sometimes without even knowing.
In Just Walk On By, Brent Staples introduces the essay with an anecdote where he calls a woman his “first victim”. From the woman’s perspective, she is rightfully the victim, for “a broad six feet two inches with a beard and billowing hair, both hands shoved into the pockets of a bulky military jacket” is inferred to be an obvious suspect of no good. She instinctively victimizes herself and flees the situation to avoid possible conflict. We know that the author had no intention of hurting the woman at all, but she still took action to protect herself.
Like the woman, sometimes we like to play the victim even in situations where it isn’t really necessary. The instinctive nature we have to victimize ourselves isn’t necessarily our fault either; it’s just something that happens without much thinking. Although playing the victim may not seem very harmful, the effect on the person who is not on the victim side is evidently jarring. The woman leaving the scene due to the appearance of the man could be viewed as uneventful, but to the man, it clearly wasn’t. He was alarmed and later realized that he carried the “ability to alter public space in ugly ways”. In the act of trying to protect herself, the reverse effect occurred. She became a person who employed racial stereotyping while he was a victim to it.
In this way, we must always be aware of how we decide to perceive ourselves and perceive others. Playing the victim may seem like a safe way to go, but the lasting impact on those around us may not be worth it in the end.
This week's song: (Sorry for being so late!)
Jon Bellion - Stupid Deep (Acoustic) // https://youtu.be/tQMKGcvMQME
This song is actually recommended by John Dannug so you should definitely give it a listen! It doesn't
really have much correlation to my blog post but it's a great song anyway. Share your thoughts afterwards :)
Jon Bellion - Stupid Deep (Acoustic) // https://youtu.be/tQMKGcvMQME
This song is actually recommended by John Dannug so you should definitely give it a listen! It doesn't
really have much correlation to my blog post but it's a great song anyway. Share your thoughts afterwards :)
Very interesting post! I find it very interesting that you take this position, as I would argue the other side saying that it is more important to protect yourself from possible dangerous situations. To me it seems like your own safety is more important that another person's feelings being hurt. In the author's case, he found ways to adapt to accommodate for the assumptions of others, which seems like a completely logical thing to do, yet if we look at it from the other side, they are doing the same thing, adapting to possible threats in order to keep themselves out of danger as much as possible. It is an impossible balancing act of possibly offending someone and possibly getting hurt.
ReplyDeleteEsther, I loved reading your post! I think that the main reason why the woman played the "victim" was just because she was so attached to her stereotypes that it became difficult to look past them, so it seemed "right" to her to go to the other side of the street. However, obviously this wasn't the best thing to do because we know that the author was really not malicious in any manner. In real life, I think we tend to play the victim when we are scared of facing the truth. It becomes easier to play the victim rather than realize that there's more to the situation. I can't wait to see what you write next week:)
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