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Dismantling Racism Resource Book

For gay men and lesbians this interplay of institutional and personal violence comes through both
written and unwritten laws. In the 25 states that still have sodomy laws, there is an increase in
tolerance for violence against lesbians and gay men, whether it is police harassment or the lack
of police protection when gay and lesbian people are assaulted. The fact that courts in many
states deny custody to gay and lesbian parents and that schools, either through written or
unwritten policy, do not hire openly gay and lesbian teachers creates a climate in which it is
permissible to act out physical violence toward lesbian and gay people.

And as I discussed in an earlier chapter, for all groups it is not just the physical violence that
controls us but the ever constant threat of violence. For women, it is not just the rape and
battering or the threat of these abuses but also that one’s life is limited by the knowledge that one
quite likely will not be honored in court. The violence is constantly nurtured by institutions that
do not respect those different from the norm. Thus, the threat of violence exists at every level.

There are other ways the defined norm manages to maintain its power and control other than
through institutional power, economic power and violence. One way the defined norm is kept an
essentially closed group is by a particular system known as lack of prior claim. At its simplest,
this means that if you weren’t there when the original document (the Constitution, for instance)
was written or when the organization was first created, then you have no right to inclusion.
Since those who wrote the Constitution were white male property owners who did not believe in
the complete humanity of either women or blacks, then these two groups have had to battle for
inclusion. If women and people of color were not in business (because of the social and cultural
restrictions on them) when the first male business organizations were formed, then they now
have to fight for inclusion. The curious thing about lack of prior claim is that it was simply the
circumstances of the moment that put the original people there in every case, yet when those who
were initially excluded begin asking for or demanding inclusion, they are seen as disruptive
people, as trouble-makers, as women who participated in the suffrage movement and the black
men and women who formed the civil rights movement. For simply asking for one’s due, one
was vilified and abused. This is an effective technique, making those struggling for their rights
the ones in the wrong. Popular movements are invalidated and minimized, their participants cast
as enemies of the people, and social change is obstructed by those holding power who cast
themselves as defenders of tradition and order.

Those who seek their rights, who seek inclusion, who seek to control their own lives instead of
having their lives controlled, are the people who fall outside the norm. They are defined in
relation to the norm and are found lacking. They are the Other. If they are not part of the norm,
they are seen as abnormal, deviant, inferior, marginalized, not “right”, even if they as a group
(such as women) are a majority of the population. They are not considered fully human. By
those identified as the Norm, the Other is unknown, difficult to comprehend, whereas the Other
always knows and understands those who hold power; one has to in order to survive. As in the
television series “Upstairs, Downstairs,” the servants always knew the inner workings of the
ruling families’ lives while the upstairs residents who had economic control knew little of the
downstairs workers’ lives. In slavery, the slave had to know the complexity, the inner workings
of the slaveowners’ lives in order to protect him/herself from them.
The Other’s existence, everyday life, and achievements are kept unknown through invisibility.
When we do not see the differently abled, the aged, gay men and lesbians, and people of color on

Dismantling Racism Project 28 Western States Center