The G.O.P. Olympics and the Blame Game

This post originated with an article entitled “The Ten Craziest Economic Policy Ideas of 2011.” In October, Florida State Representative Ritch Workman, a member of the Elephant Party, introduced a bill to end the state's ban on dwarf tossing. (In case you're wondering, I scanned several articles about Rep. Workman's proposal, and none of them suggested that he was any less than completely serious.)

Dwarf tossing is a contest usually held in bars in which participants compete to see who can throw a dwarf the farthest. The dwarfs wear padded clothing and are thrown onto a mat. In a variation, they wear Velcro clothing, are tossed at a Velcro-coated wall, and the goal is to see who can toss them the highest. Finally, there is a low-rent variation in which the dwarfs are tossed into the waiting arms of the audience. (If you're curious to see what a dwarf toss looks like, you can check it out on You Tube.)

Photo by djmarmite

For reasons about which I hesitate to speculate, this sport caught on in Florida in the 1980s. In 1989, after pressure from the Little People of America, the Florida legislature passed a bill banning the practice. Violators may have their liquor license revoked. The bill was probably helped along by the death of a dwarf, of alcohol poisoning, during a contest. There were also reports of injuries to dwarfs, including paralysis. (Little people are particularly prone to back injuries.) Dwarf tossing is also banned in New York state. To the best of my knowledge, the rest of us are free to practice the sport, if we can find a willing victim.

As the article suggested, Workman justified ending the ban on economic grounds: “All that it does is prevent some drawfs from getting jobs they would be happy to get. In this economy, or any economy, why would we want to prevent people from getting gainful employment?”

However, Workman may have also been expressing his libertarian philosophy: “I'm on a quest to seek and destroy unnecessary burdens on the freedom and liberties of people. This is an example of Big Brother government.”

By coincidence, I used to ask college students to discuss dwarf tossing as a way of introducing the ideas in John Stuart Mill's essay, On Liberty (1859). As you probably know, Mill argues that people should be free to do whatever they want, provided they do no harm to others. The state has no right to restrict your freedom merely to prevent you from harming yourself, either physically or morally. Presumably, the tossees in a dwarf toss are willing participants in exchange for money. Mill would say that it is paternalistic for the state to protect them against their will.

While I did not collect any data, it appeared to me that only a minority of students thought that dwarf tossing should be banned. These students were concerned not only about the risk of injury, but the fact that it is degrading and dehumanizing to treat physically handicapped people in this way. Of course, an individual who agrees to prohibit dwarf tossing is on a slippery slope. This opens up the possibility that other dangerous or humiliating activities (i.e., drug taking, prostitution, high school football) might also be restricted in the interest of public safety or the moral order.

However, in my experience, the majority of students opposed any restrictions on dwarf tossing. They emphasized the point that the dwarfs didn't have to agree to be tossed. They had a choice, and it is wrong to take that choice away from them. Maybe that's why so many politically engaged college students describe themselves as libertarians and support Ron Paul for president.

The problem, as I see it, is that they overemphasized the “choices” dwarfs make and failed to recognize how much those choices are constrained by factors beyond their control. The physical stature and poor general health of little people limits their job possibilities. They often work as spectacles in the entertainment industry and are the subject of negative stereotypes. While many dwarfs qualify for disability-related social security, this hardly provides a standard of living to which most Americans aspire. All of these factors limit the amount of choice little people have and channel them into making the “decision” to be a tossee.

American middle class ideology emphasizes individualism, independence and freedom of choice. We fail to take into account the fact that, for many people, the only “choices” available are all quite similar or almost equally undesirable. We don't recognize how much our own and—especially—others' choices are limited by our social environment.

Social psychologists are beginning to study the effects of this free choice ideology on our social and political attitudes. For example, in 2011 studies by Savani, Stephens and Markus, and by Savani and Rattan, the authors reminded participants of the concept of choice by having them either write about their own past choices or identify choices in the behavior of others. Compared to control participants who performed similar tasks not involving choice, those participants for whom choice was primed:

• Show decreased empathy and increased victim blaming for disadvantaged people.
• State less support for social policies that promote social equality (i.e., affirmative action) or public benefits (i.e., reducing air pollution), but greater support for individual rights (i.e., drug legalization).
• Were less disturbed by income inequality, and less willing to support policies that redistribute income more equally (i.e., progressive taxation).

These studies imply that the concept of choice is sometimes used to justify discrimination. For example, it is said that women deserve less-than-equal pay because they “chose” to take time off to bear and raise children.

The next time you go into the voting booth to choose between two candidates whose policies are virtually identical, and with whom you disagree on most issues, you might want to remember that, if you don't like the outcome of the election, you have only yourself to blame, since, after all, you had a choice!

Here's a talk by Nicole Stephens on social class differences in the understanding of choice. (It is posted in three parts, each about nine minutes long.)

I managed to toss that dwarf quite far, didn't I?