This is the book that I'm giving my friends for Christmas. I can't recommend it highly enough! It has sharpened my vision when I look at the everyday life around me, and how I cope with my family's attempts at manipulation and how I evaluate what I read in history, or in the newspaper or what I see on TV.
Even after all the work that we might have done in changing our attitudes about racism, sexism and any other ism we've known about, there's still been a lurking discomfort that we might not have been able to put our fingers on. This is what Robert Fuller calls "rankism."
Once you read this book, you'll see how rankism infects every aspect of our lives.
The signals can be very subtle, as in the old hooks that snare us when we turn into children in the presence of our parents. But now this author has articulated what we might not have been able to and given us ways to cope with things that we may have had only a felt sense about.
Until a few weeks ago, I enjoyed watching "The West Wing" on TV. The writing is so smart, so snappy, the actors were who I wish were running the country. Then last night C. J. Craig condescended to a new employee, telling him how little she thought of him as he was about 17 steps below her in rank. I felt a little stab of pain, as some of the pleasure was removed from the one show I looked forward to seeing.
Another interesting take on how rankism affects us all concerns the way certain U.S. Indian tribes are flipping the status they've had to endure for several centuries. With the advent of casinos and money, tribes are now standing up and saying, "We're still here. We count. We have clout. You can't ignore us or roll over us anymore." How they express this new power is a mirror image of the ways they were treated, and it's greatly unsettling to many politicians, townspeople near them, and casino visitors.
I'd like to take issue with one point in the editorial review which said, "...the book falls short of providing enough concrete steps on how to fight this abuse, including only two brief chapters."
Think about it: was there any one book that told us during the civil rights era what racism was and how to combat it, any one book with neat social recipes that required no more suggestions, training, or thought? What was needed then is exactly what is needed now--- many people thinking about how rankism robs us of our dignity and often wealth and health and our very lives. And each of us will confront differing situations which will require creativity and courage and hard thought. This is the book that begins to hone our awareness. Many more books will have to be written about how people confronted and defused or resolved the problems that this mindset engenders.
This book is a well-written opening statement. Maybe he'll write another one that contains the many stories of what people saw after they were aware of rankism and what they did about it. We can only hope so.
