For Human Rights: Dehumanization is the Social Deficiency Virus, Humanization the Antidote
By Taj Mahon-Haft (PhD, Sociology), Director of The Humanization Project
Every tragedy leaves us wondering anxiously all night why we can’t treat each other with basic dignity. It depends on dehumanization, the social deficiency virus weakening our defenses. While such traumas have been ubiquitous in our feeds lately, we also have the simple, proven antidote: active humanization. Because, as Michelle Obama says, “It is hard to hate up close.” Taken liberally with a spoonful of evidence, humanization has even catalyzed the reshaping of the criminal legal system in the former capital of the confederacy, where Virginia leads the nation in decarceration since George Floyd’s murder.
How can anyone do this to another human?! Children starved because of where they were born. Indiscriminate massacres at religious celebrations. Bombing schools and hospitals intentionally. A sitting president threatening, “A whole civilization will die tonight.”
Nowhere are dehumanization’s manifestations more perpetual or disregarded than in criminal justice systems across the U.S., especially in the South. Impunity for Alabama guards following murderous cover-ups of sexual and physical abuse. Exploding self-harm and suicide rates among those confined during extended solitary confinement. Hundreds of scarring, canine attacks upon predominantly African American prisoners. Pregnant women giving birth unattended in jail cells. Eliminating 92% of opportunities to visit loved ones during incarceration. Even painful state-administered deaths watched by crowds. In other contexts, such treatment would be indefensible and draw public outcry and prompt changes.
But not for people behind bars here. Following decades of dehumanization, our leaders immediately justify these abuses in dehumanizing tones. Too often that is where we land, such conclusions having normalized.
This dehumanization occurs in criminal justice settings and beyond because it efficiently works to engage assumptions and effectively serves ulterior motives, often distraction and division. It works because it is easy to hijack the shorthand understandings we are programmed to develop to effectively navigate our frantic world with attention spans conditioned to be incapable of accommodating nuance.
“Why are people without homes or having mental health crises just ignored?” “Why would they give anyone such a long time in your prison conditions?” “In a place famous for public protest, why are these things ignored?” Asked by a German political reporter speaking recently at an equity conference in Minneapolis, my repeated answer was: Dehumanization. To a label or caricature, we can do, ignore, or cheer for anything without conscience.
Knowing that recipe, we also recognize the solution: active humanization, a loose term for any process whereby impacted voices and experiences are intentionally, strategically centered in the discourse.
Humanization is the simplest antidote because it requires but a voice and a frame to bring human scale to the truth and evidence known for decades. From there, such narratives reduce intergroup conflict with more staying power than non-narrative approaches, guiding our beliefs, attitudes, intentions, AND actions. Some practical tips were recently highlighted by Mindbridge in Psychology Today.
Humanization has been spurring justice system reform where successes have continued despite the broader cultural backlash. After her featured role in “Being Michelle,” the deaf, disabled, and criminalized protagonist earned her freedom and found community. Kalief Browder and Dante Taylor were central as their families led passage of the HALT Act, banning extended solitary in New York.
The criminal justice benefits of humanization are perhaps most pronounced where history called loudest: Virginia. Strategically focusing on impacted voices and experiences has laid the foundation for an ongoing overhaul of the criminal legal system.
As a result, legislators are speaking publicly on prison’s collateral consequences and valuing human connections, and change has followed: restrictions on canine security have been enacted; bail, lactation standards, and alternatives to incarceration presumed for new and expecting mothers;; fines credited for work done for pennies behind bars; improved treatment for visitors and more opportunities to visit opportunities for visit; and expanded earned sentence credits reduced the prison population by over 6,000.
Humanization works because when we make someone else feel about a subject what we feel, it reaches them deeper, and they care more than when presented with a powerful, astonishing, but unrelatable fact. That feeling is carried as a filter for future understanding.
Humanization succeeds by making the experience three-dimensional. Such deplorable conditions in what we refer to as the “justice system” have been encouraged by discourse long centered on talking points and presumptions internalized from reductionist frames. Even the most progressive proponent of second chances must overcome a one-dimensional negative connotation when our dialogue focuses on ‘inmate,’ ‘offender,’ ‘murderer,’ ‘rapist,’ and ‘addict,’ defining someone by the worst moment of their life (if they even committed the crime).
But when we know seven things about someone, and we like six of them, even if we strongly dislike the seventh, we call that person our friend and treat them accordingly. Like offering second chances and support during crises, instead of punishment and shunning.
I speak from the heart when I extol the power of humanization. I earned my own way home almost three years sooner than my original release date last month because of systemic changes made following humanizing campaigns. In fact, every member of our team has earned time or received better opportunities in a system we helped shape by bringing a focus to our three-dimensional selves and are reshaping out here together.
The rest of that rehumanized time, I have shared the moments that matter with the people who matter: married my partner, who no longer has to do a single dish or take the dog out before work; hiked and saw the Lakers with son while paying for his community college; explored foothills on Mothers Day with Mom after organizing the logistics when we gathered following my brother’s untimely death.
Taj Mahon-Haft (PhD, Sociology) serves as Director of The Humanization Project (THP), which he cofounded while incarcerated. THP is a team of justice-impacted leaders amplifying and elevating impacted voices and experiences in order to humanize the narrative and achieve more humane and compassionate policy and treatment. THP does this through education, research, legislative advocacy, and community organizing, as part of a statewide (and expanding) movement intentionally building relationships, getting proximal, and offering real, resonant, relatable human tone to the dialogue surrounding the criminal legal system in Virginia and beyond.
Mindbridge is the nation’s leading non-profit using brain and behavioral science to empower human rights defenders.
We conduct programming, support partnerships, and direct research at the intersection of psychological science and human rights. Through these efforts, Mindbridge is growing a science-driven community that gives human rights defenders access to the hearts and minds of those they serve.
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