The Secrets of Empowerment: Scapegoating

“If I hadn’t gotten pregnant with you, I never would have married your father and been abused so much by his mother.” I cannot tell you how many times I have heard some version of that. I am the primary scapegoat for my family. For so many years, I had no idea what it is called or why it was happening. The worst part about scapegoating, is how insidious it is. And whoever the dominate person or group is that picks the scapegoat, the whole group can pick on and abuse them. Using the chosen scapegoat is a way to vent their negative emotions on an outside source without risk of being ostracized themselves. Scapegoating is so common and has been going on for so long, it is referenced in the Bible! That is actually how we have the name, it was a ritual involving a goat and a symbolic transference of “sins”. And then the goat would be released alone in the wild, to bear the burden of the tribes’ sins. It happens on large scale like an entire country blaming a minority for all of its problems, to a nuclear family and their “black sheep.” Why do people choose to pick someone to put all of their sins on? The simple answer is that it is easy. Everything has a cost. It seems like the only cost of scapegoating is the loss of one person/group of people. But to face the issues, it would be a sacrifice of the delusions and lies that people think they need to protect themselves from the things that they fear the most. What is easier to face…a chosen loss that makes you feel powerful and reinforces the conscious lies you tell yourself? Or actually facing your pain and worst fears and what that means to your identity? For a lot of people they chose to sacrifice the person/people. Minorities have been scapegoated in this country since the first invasion and conquering of the Native Americans. When the painful truth is that it has all been a fear based, selfish power play to protect something that isn’t even real and is actually self destructive. I will use my mother as an example. I was her scapegoat. She blamed all of her pain and fear on my existence. She said that when I wasn’t satisfied as an infant with the amount of milk she could produce, I made her feel like she wasn’t enough and hurt her feelings. And she decided that I as a person will never be satisfied and therefore she is blameless. And yes she used this through out my life to manipulate and control me through guilt for many years. What is sad, is that my mother struggled to produce milk, because she was malnourished from the low-quality food they could afford. Instead of facing her fear that she…