Those who point the finger are often most guilty

Those who point the finger are often most guilty
By: Peter Marina

All human beings engage in projection to varying degrees of frequency and hostility. How we deal with our own projection and othering, as well as how we deal with people who project and other us, determines if we become bullies or protectors of human rights.

The concept of projection and othering occurred to me when a police officer in my Human Rights Policing Certificate of Completion Program, which I developed with my father Lieutenant Pedro Marina (retired), inquired about how to feel and respond to people who direct their anger and frustration onto cops.

Carl Jung’s concept of projection explains how we cast our insecurities and the most repugnant aspect of ourselves onto others. Put differently, we cast our ugly shadows onto the faces of other people and then blame them for our own flaws. When people, especially privileged members of the public, call all police racists, they are often projecting their own repressed racism onto them. When privileged people say all cops engage in white supremacy, they are merely expressing their own insecure white guilt onto their faces and then hating police for reflecting their own personal insecurities and flaws. Humans are biologically and culturally determined to project.

People who “fat shame” others are often projecting their own unhealthy lifestyles and eating habits onto people they perceive as bigger. When people use slurs against members of the LGBTQ + community, they are often projecting their own sexual and gendered insecurities on their fellow brothers and sisters with different preferences. Labeling easily scapegoated people as lazy often reveals the shame people feel about their own indolence. When privileged academics call certain people racists, they are often projecting their own repressed racism onto other people. Parroting the phrase “diversity is our strength,” liberals, for example, often project their intolerance onto others who refuse to virtue signal empty words. Projection relates to othering. In the early 20th century, as a friend reminded me, the great sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois wrote