Philobiblon

P.10 “Economic inequality mirrors and reinforces something else: moral inequality. Just as the rich and the poor have come to inhabit starkly different worlds, an equally stark gap separates people who perform the most thankless, ethically troubling jobs in America and those who are exempt from these activities… the burden of dirtying one’s hands – and the benefit of having a clean conscience – are increasingly functions of privilege; of the capacity to distance oneself from the isolated places where dirty work is performed while leaving the sordid details to others. People with fewer advantage are not only more likely to do this work; they are more likely to be failed for it, singled out as “bad apples” who can be blamed when systematic violence that has long been tolerated and perhaps even encouraged by superiors occasionally come to light… The higher-ups and the “good people” who have tacitly condoned what they are doing remain untarnished, free to claim that they knew nothing about it while casting judgements on the scapegoats. The familiar colloquial meaning of ‘dirty work’ is a thankless or unpleasant task. In this book, the term refers to something different and more specific. First, it is work that causes substantial harm either to other people or to nonhuman animals and the environment, often through the infliction of violence. Second, it entails doing something that “good people” – the respectable members of society – see as dirty and morally compromised. Third, it is work that is injurious to the people who do it, leading them either to feel devalued and stigmatized by others or to feel that they have betrayed their own core values and beliefs.Last and most important, it is contingent on a tacit mandate from the “good people”, who see this work as a necessary part of the social order but don’t explicitly assent to it and can, if need be, disavow responsibility for it”