Those who point the finger are often most guilty

Those who point the finger are often most guilty
By: Peter Marina

All human beings engage in projection to varying degrees of frequency and hostility. How we deal with our own projection and othering, as well as how we deal with people who project and other us, determines if we become bullies or protectors of human rights.

The concept of projection and othering occurred to me when a police officer in my Human Rights Policing Certificate of Completion Program, which I developed with my father Lieutenant Pedro Marina (retired), inquired about how to feel and respond to people who direct their anger and frustration onto cops.

Carl Jung’s concept of projection explains how we cast our insecurities and the most repugnant aspect of ourselves onto others. Put differently, we cast our ugly shadows onto the faces of other people and then blame them for our own flaws. When people, especially privileged members of the public, call all police racists, they are often projecting their own repressed racism onto them. When privileged people say all cops engage in white supremacy, they are merely expressing their own insecure white guilt onto their faces and then hating police for reflecting their own personal insecurities and flaws. Humans are biologically and culturally determined to project.

People who “fat shame” others are often projecting their own unhealthy lifestyles and eating habits onto people they perceive as bigger. When people use slurs against members of the LGBTQ + community, they are often projecting their own sexual and gendered insecurities on their fellow brothers and sisters with different preferences. Labeling easily scapegoated people as lazy often reveals the shame people feel about their own indolence. When privileged academics call certain people racists, they are often projecting their own repressed racism onto other people. Parroting the phrase “diversity is our strength,” liberals, for example, often project their intolerance onto others who refuse to virtue signal empty words. Projection relates to othering. In the early 20th century, as a friend reminded me, the great sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois wrote about how black people experienced a sense of otherness and exclusion in the United States. It’s a problem that perhaps all people experience in a highly divided, hierarchal society. Du Bois said:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of the other, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder…

While Du Bois was describing the feelings of being both an American and a black person, many people experience these feelings of two-ness. People often make other people feel like outsiders, inferiors, and the “other,” because of their social class, immigration status, sexual orientation, racial and ethnic identity, or some other category. Many immigrants experience this sense of two-ness today with feelings of being both a member of their original culture and an American. My family has experienced this being Cuban-Americans.

In today’s political climate, perhaps police officers also sense this feeling of two-ness, for example, being a stereotyped cop and a community member or being a police officer and a woman or black/brown person.

We all project and “other” people; police officers too. So do professors. I’ve seen many privileged professors engage in projection and othering towards their colleagues making them feel like outsiders, inferior, and the “other.”

Those who point the finger the most are often most guilty. Most important, we must also ask ourselves the following:

How often do you tell stories that turn others into your inferior? How often do you make people feel like outsiders?

How often do you “other” other people based on some category?

Asking such questions, I realized how I’ve “othered” rural people while living for the first time in a small-town rural setting. I work hard to avoid repeating this process.

If police officers realize how they are constantly subject to projection and othering, it becomes easier to recognize how they also do it. I believe police officers can become better than the vast majority of people who constantly project their shadows and “other” people. Police officers can rise above the proverbial muck and mire to become great examples of people who protect human rights, even during highly difficult times when the public has intensified their projection and othering.

To police officers: you are members of the working-and-middle classes who also police fellow members of the working-and-middle classes. People will constantly project their shadow onto you and make you feel like outsiders and “others.” While we all have a tendency to defend ourselves from such projection and othering, especially when attacked, I believe the better approach is to understand why people cast their ugly shadows onto to you and develop a sense of empathy. Simply put, the reason people project is because it’s difficult for people to accept their own flaws and insecurities, so they instinctually misplace them onto other people, onto you. Reach out to the people who project their ugly shadow onto you, for they are really only hating themselves. Reach out to those who make you outsiders, for they too are outsiders. If you understand this process, you can develop a sense of pity, and hopefully, a sense of empathy too.

Allow them to enjoy their human rights even when they project their insecurities and flaws onto you. This is an essential task of human rights policing. It is achievable and can improve the professional and personal lives of those who practice it.

Dr. Peter Marina is a sociologist and criminologist at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse. Along with his father, (retired) Lieutenant Pedro Marina, he teaches human rights policing to law enforcement professionals throughout the United States. He is author of the upcoming book Human Rights Policing: Reimagining Law Enforcement in the 21st Century with Routledge Press.