Contempt and Locality

This article had actually been ready to write half a year ago, or even earlier. It was during the Olympics, and I wrote a few articles in the form of “…and …”, including two bad-stub pieces; I only wrote down the title “Contempt and Locality” and never went on. Now, although I’d like to change it to a more provocative title—say, “Why Do We Contempt Migrant Workers?”—after thinking it over, I still decided not to go in for clickbait.

At first I wanted to start from international contempt in the Olympics (for example, how Chinese people look at Koreans and Japanese). Recently, when I thought of rewriting it, I tried to begin with Shanghainese people and “outsiders”; and just recently there was another striking incident that would be even better as an opening, namely a migrant worker being berated by an old woman: “If you’re this dirty, don’t take the bus”.

This incident certainly involves “contempt,” but who is contempting whom here? Is the old woman contempting the migrant worker? Not really, or at least not in such a simple way. Some people also said this was the old woman “discriminating against” the migrant worker, and that is even more far-fetched. Perhaps migrant workers do indeed suffer discrimination, but at least this particular incident does not involve that.

I have said that discrimination is different from contempt, so let us first talk about what “discrimination” means.

A casual search on Baidu Baike gives an everyday definition: “treating people with an unequal eye on the basis of some defect, shortcoming, ability, or background.” That sentence is a bit ambiguous—if there really are defects or differences in ability, then what is wrong with regarding them unequally? For example, I will give up my seat to a disabled person, but not to an ordinary person. That is of course treating them unequally, but is it discrimination? Apparently not. More precisely, discrimination means taking certain unequal aspects of a person and extending them excessively to other aspects of that person. For instance, regarding a person with a physical disability as someone with poor athletic ability is normal, but treating them as intellectually inferior is discrimination.

Discrimination is also different from ordinary prejudice. For example, I think Sichuan people generally like spicy food. That is certainly a prejudice, and obviously there are many counterexamples, but this prejudice seems reasonable—if I invite a group of Sichuan people to dinner, I will think about ordering more spicy dishes; if I invite a group of Shanghainese people to dinner, I may not order a single spicy dish. This kind of differential treatment is of course based on prejudice, but it probably does not count as discrimination. Similarly, when we painstakingly think about what gifts to give depending on whether the recipient is a girl or a boy, we are also making differential judgments based on prejudice—for example, giving girls pink things, boys black things, supplements to old people, toys to children… This is all differential treatment, but I’m afraid it still does not count as discrimination—although some radical feminists may well think this is discrimination, such stubbornness is very uninteresting.

In other words, “discrimination” is not merely “treating differently,” but “treating differently too much,” because mutual treatment among people is inherently differentiated, yet every differentiation has its relative scope. Only when one oversteps the relativity of difference and absolutizes differential treatment does it count as discrimination.

So, to judge what kind of gaze counts as discrimination, what we first need to understand is what kind of gaze ought to be directed at such people; or rather, we need to consider the gaze that people, out of custom and common sense, direct at such people, and determine to what extent it is reasonable or proper—of course, this proper gaze is already a differentiated prejudice, and beyond that, how much is mixed in of an excessive, that is, unreasonable and impolite, gaze. This part of the gaze that is “too much” is what “discrimination” is. “Discrimination” does not depend on good or bad intentions, but on whether something is appropriate or excessive.

And in the case of the old woman berating the migrant worker, the issue of “excessive” treatment of “migrant workers” as a category is not involved. In fact, there is not even any issue here of moderate or excessive prejudice at all. Suppose the situation were this: a person is wearing clothes as clean as everyone else’s, or as dirty as everyone else’s, and I feel that just because this person is a migrant worker, he is dirtier than the others—only then would prejudice manifest itself as discrimination. In the Western world, where black people are discriminated against, there have indeed been such situations: even if black people are dressed in perfectly tailored suits, they are still considered dirty or coarse. That is discrimination. But obviously, that is not what happened to the migrant worker here.

The key point is that he obviously would not have boarded the bus shouting “I am a migrant worker,” and migrant workers, unlike black people, do not have obvious racial differences. So the old woman was not disgusted by his dirt because he was a migrant worker; on the contrary, it was precisely from the dirtiness of his clothes that people recognized him as a migrant worker.

Therefore, this is a matter of contempt, not discrimination.

Before saying what contempt is, let me say a little more about discrimination: in this case, the old woman did not discriminate against migrant workers; at least the initial matter of “finding him dirty” was not due to discrimination against migrant workers. But if there is still discrimination involved here, then it is precisely in those who, with righteous indignation, defend migrant workers.

We said that whether something counts as discrimination depends on whether differentiation is excessive, not on whether one’s intentions are good or bad. For example, if in the United States a teacher berates a student for not studying properly and being undisciplined, and someone nearby leaps up to defend him: “Don’t scold him, he is black; black people are part of American culture, and without blacks or whites life would be impossible, and so on and so forth.” Then aside from saying that this defender is answering a question that was never asked, we will probably also discover that this defender is very likely the real discriminator. The implicit subtext of his defense is: “Well, black people are naturally stupid and disobedient; since black people have done so much hard labor, just don’t yell at him.”

This is a typical case of excessive differentiation. Of course, because of historical and现实 reasons, the educational level and community order among black people may indeed be relatively worse, but when a teacher faces students in the classroom, he is supposed to treat them all the same; he should not loosen his standards especially because a student is black. Being specially lenient when one ought to be equal is also a form of discrimination.

So in the case of the old woman berating the migrant worker, let us ask ourselves honestly: first, is it a reasonable matter of etiquette that one should dress appropriately in public places? Second, if the one dressed inappropriately were a coal baron, a streetwalker, a rapist, an engineer, or any random person, and an old woman stood up and angrily denounced him, would we still be denouncing the old woman in chorus as we are now? Is it because we, consciously or unconsciously, hold the prejudice that it is only natural for migrant workers to dress inappropriately in public places that we so strongly support the migrant worker?

In a certain sense, this kind of “prejudice” is not discrimination in itself, but reality; yet to be especially forgiving of migrant workers’ breaches of etiquette on this account is discrimination. Ironically, some people support migrant workers by saying “migrant workers have made so many contributions to city-building,” which is like saying, “Because it’s important for women to have children, don’t call them stupid,” or “Because black people are important to building America, don’t call them savage.”

Of course, I am not saying that the old woman’s berating was itself appropriate. She could certainly have expressed her opinion in a more decent and tactful way. And shouting abuse in public places is, in any case, always impolite—whether directed at migrant workers or at corrupt officials. But those who scold the old woman rarely target the question of propriety; instead they aim their arrows at “discrimination,” and that is to miss the point entirely.

But we must ask: behind the old woman’s rebuke, was there perhaps mixed in some attitude of contempt toward the migrant worker group? That probably was there too.

What is contempt? Contempt is to look down on, to think little of; it is the opposite of valuing and respecting. Like discrimination, contempt is also related to differentiated ways of seeing people, but it refers to something completely different. Discrimination involves the abuse of prejudice, while contempt involves the attitude inherent in the prejudice itself.

For example, we say Americans especially champion freedom. That is a prejudice, and of course there are exceptions, or it may even be altogether inappropriate. But as for this prejudice itself, there can still be different attitudes toward it: one may respect it, or one may despise it—look how free and loose those Americans are, they’re practically a heap of loose sand. Likewise, when one says Northerners are rough and robust, some may admire their boldness while others may dislike their coarseness; when one says Shanghainese men are henpecked, some may look down on their lack of manliness while others may appreciate their gentleness and consideration… In other words, “contempt” is built upon the diversity of values: we have different views about the good, about what constitutes a good character, about what counts as proper action, and between these different notions contempt can arise.

I saw online that some migrant workers were shouting: Why do you have the right to look down on us? We have contributed so much to the city, and now we can also make a lot, a lot of money—don’t look down on us, earning tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands a month and so on… Seeing these claims, it only made me look down on this kind of person even more—what is so great about making a few extra stinkingly earned bucks? If you can earn that much money and still not be able to change into a different outfit on the way to and from work, then that is even more contemptible. If it were a typical Shanghainese city dweller, even if he were flat broke, he would certainly still force himself to change into a neat outfit in public—do you still remember the “fake collar”?—and under no circumstances would he be willing to lose face. Of course, this kind of manner would in turn be looked down on by others as affected and pretentious.

So, Shanghainese locals may look down on outside migrant workers for being shabby and coarse, while outsiders in turn may look down on Shanghainese people for being coy and artificial. Both sides are right; this is not a matter of right and wrong, but of culture.

Precisely because contempt is built upon differences in values, contempt is often mutual: while looking down on others, one is also always being looked down upon by others. So when readers hear me say that I want to defend contempt, they may instinctively feel very resistant and repelled, as if I were standing in a superior position and looking down on others. In fact, contempt is not a relation of high and low, but a relation of center and periphery—just as the original meaning of the character 鄙 indicates. Every person is located in some cultural center, and among other cultural centers, large and small, relative to this cultural circle, if there are differences in values, mutual contempt can occur. Shanghainese people look down on outsiders, but don’t outsiders also look down on Shanghainese? Did you know that “you don’t seem like a Shanghainese” is the highest compliment a Shanghainese can receive from the outside world? Intellectuals may look down on ordinary folk, but ordinary people also look down on intellectuals. Those who study the humanities look down on those in science and engineering, and those in science and engineering also look down on the humanities. Especially for those of us who study philosophy—have we suffered comparatively little contempt?

And it is precisely for these kinds of “contempts” that I want to defend, especially the contempt others have for me—you can look down on philosophy for being useless, but uselessness is precisely the glory of philosophers; you can look down on humanities students for being detached from reality, intellectuals for being pedantic, Shanghainese people for this and that. Of course there is misunderstanding or excessive stereotyping mixed in here, but in any case, the reason these contemptuous views are possible is precisely that they affirm the distinctiveness of the culture to which I belong. Therefore, there is absolutely no need to “feel hurt” by “contempt.”

Contempt and respect are relative. If I only know how to respect and do not know how to contempt, that must be hypocritical. But neither can I take the set of values and preferences belonging to my own personal cultural background and regard it as an absolute standard of value. I am also a pluralist in axiology—as with “knowledge,” value and preference are also local.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.