Why I Don’t Let My Students Play the Victim

Strictly Education

Katharine Birbalsingh explores the psychological and social dangers of 'victimhood culture,' where individuals use identity labels to evade

Key takeaways

• Victimhood culture allows individuals to use labels like neurodiversity or race as justifications for poor behavior.
• Terrence Howard is cited as an example of using ancestral trauma to avoid modern financial obligations like taxes.

Main topics

• Victimhood culture
• Personal responsibility

Notable quotes

The anti-victim is somebody who changes themselves for the world rather than expecting the world to change for them.

Conclusion

True strength lies in developing the agency to overcome adversity rath

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) When you're looking for evidence that someone is out to get you, you're going to find it, even when it doesn't exist. This is why it's dangerous to tell children all the ways the world might be unfair to them. It means they'll see unfairness everywhere. And if you see unfairness everywhere, you will stop focusing on what is in your control to make the most of your life. Speaker 1 (0:26) Hello and welcome to Strictly Education with me, Katherine Birbal-Singh, Britain's strictest headmistress. Today I want to talk to you about victimhood. Victimhood is the idea that for some people, the hard things they've experienced literally become their identity. And they define themselves by these labels of victimhood. And so their expectations of themselves and the world around them change as a result. There are loads of different labels. Poverty, gender, race, sexuality, neurodiversity, mental health, a bad relationship with your father, and so on. I could give you a million different examples. Victimhood culture, well, it's kind of everywhere. And victimhood culture is seriously toxic for children in particular. I'll give you a trivial example from earlier on in my teaching career. I remember when it became fashionable to diagnose kids with disorders rather than say, well, they're just being badly behaved. So kids who were disruptive would have anger management, or I suppose nowadays we'd call it oppositional defiant disorder. And, well, we started using these terms openly in front of the kids, right? And so, slowly but surely, children who did bad things stopped saying stuff like, oh, sorry, miss, I lost my temper. Sorry, miss, I was shouting too much. And instead, they started saying things like, I have anger management. i.e., I'm a kid who doesn't need to behave. What happened isn't my fault. I have a disorder. In other words, I have an excuse for any type of poor behavior. That's a good example of victimhood. You have a label, and now you have something that justifies your actions, like shouting at someone. Your very identity then helps to explain who you are and what you do, and it reduces your personal responsibility, which, let's face it, everyone likes. Now, that example is a slightly funny one. You know, kids trying to get out of trouble. But there are other examples of victimhood where someone might genuinely experience something hard and the effect can end up the same. It becomes a label that changes what they expect of themselves. It also definitely isn't just children who do this. You see this in celebrities all of the time. I used to think way back in the early 1990s that the African-American actor Terrence Howard was the bee's knees. I think... Every young Black woman in those days will have thought the same way about him. And here's what he's been saying more recently. Speaker 7 (2:55) Just recently, a judge in Philadelphia ordered actor Terrence Howard to pay nearly a million dollars in back taxes. Sounds like he had been owing taxes from like 2010 to 2019. I mean, that's a lot of money, right? Speaker 1 (3:12) It means you're super rich. But you've not paid your fair share of tax. So you'd think it'd be a simple case of him saying something like, well, you know, whatever, I made an error. Let's see how we can put this right. But instead, here's his response. Speaker 7 (3:27) Terrence Howard left this on the lead tax attorney's voicemail last November. 400 years of forced labor and never receiving any compensation for it. Now you have the gall to try and prosecute and charge taxes to the descendants of a broken people that you are responsible for causing the breakage. Then they said in the second message, he says, in truth, the entire United States should by default become the property of the descendants of slaves. But since you do not have the ability or the courage to do it, let's try this in court. We're going to bring you down. Speaker 1 (4:04) We're going to bring you down. I mean, somehow he's managed to make himself into a victim because his ancestors were enslaved. I mean, Terrence, if you're watching, I think you're a great actor, but this is insane. He's turned the whole thing upside down and there are people actually defending his ludicrous position. I mean, we've lost our damn minds, frankly, but it's a good example of how victimhood works. You're part of a victim group. And that sort of makes you innocent. Speaker 5 (4:32) And everyone else then is guilty. So Terrence Howard is actually flipping it. He's saying that asking him to pay his taxes is wrong. He's saying my victimhood group gives me the political power to not pay my taxes. I.e., I'm black, so I don't have to pay my taxes, no matter how rich I am. Speaker 1 (4:58) This is victimhood culture 101. You have the label, you're therefore innocent. So you have reduced agency. Things that would be your fault stop being Speaker 5 (5:10) your fault once you have the innocence of victimhood. The kid who says, I can't behave well, I have my label, so the shouting isn't my responsibility, is the same as Terrence Howard saying, I'm black, so paying my taxes. Isn't my responsibility. Now, the thing about people is we're kind of selfish and we're all happy, all of us. We're all happy to dodge responsibility, right? So once you have established a culture where victimhood equals innocence, people will be influenced by that. You can't help it. That's just what's going to happen. You'll get more labels and more victimhood over Speaker 1 (5:52) time. It becomes a quick way. to have power. Because it isn't just dear Terrence who does this. Watch any celebrity fall from grace and you'll hear all about their anxiety, their sex addiction, how they're a victim of the press, how the scrutiny is hurtful to their family. You'll find the victim identity is used to dodge responsibility and wrongdoing all of the time. Speaker 5 (6:15) The thing about culture is that if our big celebrities, who we admire, can use victimhood as an excuse, so can everyone. It trickles down until you see it everywhere. Speaker 1 (6:27) So in a minute, I'll show a video, which is kind of funny, where a woman has basically been drunk driving and the police officer pulls her over. Notice her instinct. Miss Perry? Speaker 4 (6:40) I'm non-binary, so... Okay. I need to know if you have any injuries or anything that would prevent you from doing a standard walk or a turn tonight. Mental health. I also have very bad social anxiety. You and me both. Speaker 4 (6:53) Okay. So just focus on my finger. Well, as you know, as an indigenous person and there's a bunch of going around. You guys are scaring me. There's nothing to be afraid of. Speaker 5 (7:06) Yes, Speaker 4 (7:06) there is. Speaker 5 (7:10) Okay, so we've got indigenous, non-binary, anxiety. We've got intergenerational trauma. Do you see the pattern? Do you see how it works? Now look, I don't know the lady and she's clearly Speaker 1 (7:24) got issues, but this stuff spreads. This is how culture works. If it's valid to highlight victimhood in order to be let off, then people are going to do it, right? There's also a related thing, which is that in a culture that really deifies the victim experience, some people will announce their labels as if they're virtues. So in the UK, we had some elections in 2026. These are the first words of one of our politicians after being elected to the Scottish Parliament. My name is Speaker 8 (7:54) Dr. Akhil Manavanan. I am a transgender Tamil immigrant. My pronouns are they, them. Speaker 8 (8:02) I am, to some in this country, everything that the hateful despise, and I'm standing here as your MSP now with care. Speaker 1 (8:09) So this young man has just been elected to be a politician in Scotland. And what he mentions is queer, Tamil, immigrant, and his pronouns. He mentions his identities, all of them victim identities. Think about it. Why is he announcing these things? What does this tell us about our culture? It's because that's Speaker 5 (8:32) the source of his power and his identity and basically his virtue. He's saying, look at me, look at these different forms of hardship I've experienced that define me. Now, he isn't using it to excuse any behavior. It's instead being used as a shorthand in this instance for his superiority. He's saying, you should admire me because I'm such a big victim. He spoke about Speaker 1 (9:00) how he grew up hungry and was starved as a child. But then it turns out that he went to private school