“Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.”[1] Emma Goldman was referring in essence to the dilemma that Robert Merton would later explore between legitimate and illegitimate means toward socially desirable and undesirable ends.[2]
Society needs to provide opportunities for people to pursue socially desirable goals by legitimate means. Even with opportunity, some people will nonetheless pursue undesirable goals: In the present day, neoliberal ideology further enables a constitutional oligarchy (so-called “democracy”) with a widening gap between the poor and the rich and labels this as freedom.
But social scientists are well aware—Goldman and Merton were neither the first nor the last to comment—that the vast majority of “deviant behavior” (more commonly referred to as “crime”) stems from a lack of opportunity—indeed, economic desperation, and further that this behavior is perversely treated much more harshly than that of those who have opportunity. The U.S. refuses to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights[3]—a core human rights treaty[4]—at least in part because it would require economic freedom for workers as well as their managers.
People who are desperate are treated as criminals. People who are rich and who do much more harm on a far wider scale are occasionally, but much less often, subject to civil penalties. People of color and the poor are much more often subject to suspicion, more often brought to trial, more often convicted, more often sentenced much more harshly.[5] It goes without saying that the rich have access to far better legal representation than that afforded the indigent.
We often treat Donald Trump as an aberration, but that he can be convicted of 34 felonies,[6] be found civilly liable for an offense tantamount to rape,[7] and still run as a major party candidate for president, with some of his supporters even posting yard signs proclaiming that they are “voting for the felon,” in a race that is much too close to call, in the same society where a young black kid, Trayvon Martin, was shot to death—summarily executed—for walking down the street eating Skittles,[8] is not nearly the aberration we think it to be.
A real standard of judgment in our society is largely about class. When people are rich, they are presumed good and intelligent. When they are poor, they are presumed evil and stupid. For all our belly-aching about “crime,” there is nothing we love more than to blame victims. In our national discourse, we may speak of race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability (as long as it’s visible) as factors in discrimination, but we rarely acknowledge class or age.
This appears again with migration. We are extraordinarily reluctant to acknowledge the conditions—especially those which U.S. policy has exacerbated—that lead asylum-seekers to seek asylum.[9] Instead, we are desperate to deport them, preferably back to the very conditions they risked their lives to escape.
But we fancy ourselves a kind people. Goldman saw us for the hypocrites we are.
[1] Emma Goldman, quoted in GoodReads, n.d., https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/44892-ask-for-work-if-they-don-t-give-you-work-ask
[2] Robert K. Merton, “Social Structure and Anomie,” in Social Theory, ed. Charles Lemert, 6th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2017), 181-190.
[3] Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, “UN Treaty Body Database,” n.d., https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/Treaty.aspx?CountryID=187&Lang=en
[4] Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, “The Core International Human Rights Instruments and their monitoring bodies,” n.d., https://www.ohchr.org/en/core-international-human-rights-instruments-and-their-monitoring-bodies
[5] Steven E. Barkan, Criminology: A Sociological Understanding, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006); Jeffrey Reiman, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, 7th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2004)
[6] Michael R. Sisak et al., “Guilty: Trump becomes first former US president convicted of felony crimes,” Associated Press, May 31, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/trump-trial-deliberations-jury-testimony-verdict-85558c6d08efb434d05b694364470aa0
[7] Aaron Blake, “Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll,” Washington Post, July 19, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/19/trump-carroll-judge-rape/
[8] Greg Botelho, “What happened the night Trayvon Martin died,” Cable News Network, May 23, 2012, https://www.cnn.com/2012/05/18/justice/florida-teen-shooting-details/index.html
[9] David Benfell, “Conservative Views on Undocumented Migration” (doctoral dissertation, Saybrook, 2016). ProQuest (1765416126).