The Somebody Mystique and the Rise of the Uppity Nobody

By Michelle Chihara, AlterNet. Posted April 28, 2003.

Once the youngest college president in the nation, the board chair of an international nonprofit corporation, an author and a professor, Robert Fuller knows what it is to be a "somebody." It's to experience the power and the respect conferred upon those with rank. But when he left his position as a college president, he also experienced the disrespect and humiliation visited on those of lower rank -- the "nobodies" of the world.

Fuller's life experience has led him to create an over-arching theory of "rankism," which he defines as "abuse and discrimination based on a power difference as signified by rank." He finds a common thread among all the familiar "isms" like sexism and racism, in that they all consist of the abuse of an existing power structure that results in inequity, injustice, or indignity.

Fuller, author of the new book, "Somebodies and Nobodies," is not advocating the elimination of rank; he fully recognizes the need for hierarchy in society. Instead, he sees an "unheralded, unnamed revolution unfolding in our midst," in which "people are becoming less willing to put up with disrespect." This "dignitarian movement" is based on equal respect for others regardless of rank. He wants to debunk the "somebody mystique" by exposing the cult of personality surrounding the rich, famous and powerful. He wants rankism named and condemned in its every incarnation, from our private lives to our public officials. He sees rankism in many of our current crises, from American Airlines and Enron to the Catholic clergy. "Somebodies and Nobodies" is his shot at doing for rankism what Betty Friedan did for feminism.

AlterNet spoke with Robert Fuller at his home in Berkeley, California.

AlterNet: You talk about eliminating rankism, but not rank. Can you give me an example of an appropriate use of rank, in contrast with an abuse of rank, preferably with the same rank in mind?

Robert Fuller: The Somalia example is a tough example of where America, as the number one ranked military power, and in defiance of many voices, went in and pulled rank and ended a genocide. We did the same thing in Kosovo a few years later. We exercised our rank and stopped two genocides in the last decade. There's an example at the global level of the use of rank, where I think not to have done anything would have been an abuse of our power.

Another kind of funny example I like to give is the chemistry professor walks into the lab and he sees two students playing with chemicals. One of them is about to pour the nitric acid over the glycerin. BOOM. End of campus. He grabs them and stops them in a way that initially seems like an abuse of rank, but actually it's the right use of his rank. He knows that those two chemicals make nitroglycerin. The students don't. His rank is earned and his use of his power is appropriate. There are many cases where rank is valid and legitimate, where not to have any creates anarchy and endless boring committee meetings. That's the tyranny of structurelessness, an odd reverse form of tyranny where the person ends up being the tyrant who has the greatest tolerance for the most boredom. So rank has its place.

On the other hand when we can get past strict rankings, in the degree to which we can get past them and cooperate in a more flexible and fluid way, with less hierarchical discipline, we gain additional economies. Additional efficiencies come from that. Resourcefulness can come. Where it really applies is Silicon Valley. By getting rid of that strict hierarchy you had a much more creative and flexible and productive research team.

What else does the society that you envision look like in day to day life? How do CEOs treat everyone else? How are they treated, once this evolution has occurred?

My answer would be, once we bring rank out of the closet like we've brought race and gender out of the closet. We're free to talk about them now, we're free to object when they're used as the basis of abuse and discrimination. You just call the boss a sexist and he apologizes humbly and tries to fix his behavior.

When you're lucky.

It's not as finished as I'm pretending and I know that, especially around race. But it's infinitely better than when I was a kid, I mean, when I was a kid if a black person protested he was lynched. Period. So we've come a long way, but not on rankism. In rankism when you protest these things, you're still fired. It's the economic equivalent of a lynching, you're basically fired. And I want to see that change. I think it can be changed within 10 years. I think we're on the verge of a dignitarian movement to overcome rankism that's going to create passions analogous to those generated in the women's movement in the '60s.

So back to the CEO, what would that look like in the workplace?

It looks like the employees feel perfectly comfortable asking the boss about the prerogatives of his rank. They say to the CEO: "What can you decide, what can't you decide? To what extent are we consulted about that? What's your salary, what are your bonuses? Are the board meetings open, so we can hear the decision process. Do we have any meaningful representation on the board?"

This is in contrast to what's happening now, for example with American Airlines. [American Airlines asked its unions to agree to deep cuts in salaries, benefits and pensions. The next day it came out that the executives had awarded themselves huge bonuses and that their pensions were protected.] It was such a betrayal of trust, it was such rankism of the senior ranks looking out only for themselves and abusing their decision-making power to decide in favor of increasing their own salaries. Can you believe it?

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