How America's Bully Economy leads to a "Bully Society"

Photo Credit: New York University Press

The following is an excerpt from Jessie Klein's new book " The Bully Society: School Shootings and the Crisis of Bullying in America's Schools," (New York University Press, 2013).

Schools are microcosms of American society where students are told that  financial wealth and superficial gender markers are compulsory for social acceptance. They learn these lessons from each other but also from grown-ups—parents, teachers,  and the wider culture  they inhabit. As they prepare to enter the adult workforce and social life, children come to understand that being perceived as the richest or prettiest, or the most powerful or confident, could  dramatically  enhance their futures—and that without  these marks of American success they may become lifelong outcasts. They also learn to see life as a zero-sum game, where they can win only if someone else loses, rise only by ensuring  that  someone else falls. These values are at the core of bullying behavior, and they are also the foundation upon which much of the economic, political, and social life of our nation is built.

Not all cultures are so obsessively focused on winning. In the Southwest, for instance, coaches say that teams of Hopi Indians want to win but that they often try not to win because they don’t want to embarrass their opponents. In some traditional cultures, the game isn’t over until the two sides are tied. They work hard to make sure no one loses. Even in Europe, as T. R. Reid writes in “The European Social Model,” some core human needs  are seen as everyone’s birthright rather  than  as something to be “won” through competition with one’s compatriots. “To Americans,” Reid writes, “it is simply a matter  of common sense that rich families get better medical care and education than the poor; the rich can afford the doctors at the fancy clinics and the tutors  to get their kids into Harvard.  But this piece of common sense does not apply in most of Europe. The corporate executive in the back seat of the limo, her chauffeur up front, and the guy who pumps the gas for them all go to the same doctor  and the same hospitals and send their children to the same (largely free) universities.”

In the United States, however, hardcore competition and striving to be the best are generally considered vital to keeping people motivated  and functioning at optimal  levels. Harsh  inequalities  are considered, at best, an  unfortunate consequence. Yet gender  pressures—and especially the expectation to embrace  hypermasculine values and  behaviors—are  seldom examined in the context of the larger socioeconomic forces that shape them.

In one of my criminal justice classes, I asked students to tell me what words they associated  with capitalism.  What  qualities do you need to be successful in our society? The board filled up quickly: competitive, aggressive, and powerful were some of the first suggestions. At that point, we were discussing white-collar crime and the unprincipled behavior that had produced both the Enron scandal and the economic meltdown of recent years. Later in the course we discussed  school shootings  and their  relationship to gender, and I asked my students to list some words they associated with masculinity. The same list emerged— competitive, aggressive, and powerful. Without intending to, my students had highlighted  the link between  the values of masculinity and capitalism.The school shooters,  for the most  part, grew up in the 1980s or later. The rise in school shootings  roughly coincides with the Reagan administration’s restructuring of the American  economic,  political, and cultural landscape—a period that glorified unrestrained capitalism and reemphasized an “up by your own bootstraps” ethos. Following a landslide reelection in 1984, Reagan promised  an America  rich with freedom,  individualism,  and  financial reward for  those  who  skillfully met  the  standard, coupled  with a lower degree of support for those  who did not. Increasingly, success was defined in terms  of power, economic  attainment, and social status—the same barometers increasingly used, at the high school level, to assess masculinity.