# Badge of shame

A badge of shame, also a symbol of shame, mark of shame, or simply a stigma, is typically a distinctive symbol required to be worn by a specific group or an individual for the purpose of public humiliation, ostracism, or persecution.

## Quotes

* To be associated with industry no longer carries the stigma of profiteering, exploitation and of being uncaring as it did when I was at school.
** Richard Branson; From Branson's Foreword to the book: Marcouse, Ian (1996). Understanding Industry. Bath: Hodder & Stoughton. p. ix. ISBN 034067927-1.
* Probably the respect or stigma attaching to particular classes of actions arose from the fact that these classes of actions were—or were thought to be—beneficial or injurious to the society of the time; but it is also clear that this good or bad name once created clings to the action long after the action has ceased in the course of social progress to be beneficial in the one case, or injurious in the other; and indeed long after the thinkers of the race have discovered the discrepancy. And so in a short time arises a great confusion in the popular mind between what is really good or evil for the race and what is reputed to be so—the bolder spirits who try to separate the two having to atone for this confusion by their own martyrdom.
** Edward Carpenter “Defence of criminals: A criticism of morality” (1889)
* The notion that "applied" knowledge is somehow less worthy than "pure" knowledge, was natural to a society in which all useful work was performed by slaves and serfs, and in which industry was controlled by the models set by custom rather than by intelligence. Science, or the highest knowing, was then identified with pure theorizing, apart from all application in the uses of life; and knowledge relating to useful arts suffered the stigma attaching to the classes who engaged in them.
** John Dewey (1916) Democracy and Education.
* The Greeks, who were apparently strong on visual aids, originated the term stigma to refer to bodily signs designed to expose something unusual and bad about the moral status of the signifier. The signs were cut or burnt into the body and advertised that the bearer was a slave, a criminal, or a traitor — a blemished person, ritually polluted, to be avoided, especially in public places. Later, in Christian times, two layers of metaphor were added to the term : the first referred to bodily signs of holy grace that took the form of eruptive blossoms on the skin; the second, a medical allusion to this religious allusion, referred to bodily signs of physical disorder. Today the term is widely used in something like the original literal sense, but is applied more to the disgrace itself than to the bodily evidence of it. Furthermore, shifts have occurred in the kinds of disgrace that arouse concern. Students, however, have made little effort to describe the structural preconditions of stigma, or even to provide a definition of the concept itself. It seems necessary, therefore, to try at the beginning to sketch in some very general assumptions and definitions.
** Erving Goffman (1963), Stigma : Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity p. 1-2
* Racial discrimination a mark of shame on twentieth-century man, although intolerable to most humans can still be seen in various parts of the world. And the power-seeking policies of the strong are hampering the execution of United Nations' ideals.
** Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, The Shah's Message on the occasion of the 23rd Anniversary of the Foundation of the United Nations - October 24, 1968
* Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity.
** Attributed to Thomas Watson, Jr. in: "Stand up and be counted" in: Year: encyclopedia news annual (1965). p. 280.

## See also

* Social stigma
* Taboo