This report will demonstrate my understanding of the discriminated groups within society, drawing on one or more strands of equality. I will be looking through multiple lenses, however the primary focus will be based around disabilities and what it means for the people who have a disability. Having been involved in the community and youth work sector, I will be able to draw up on experiences from practice and speak of the cultural and historical views which formed young people’s understanding of those with a disability and of different ethnicity.
Social justice, equality and diversity are inter-linked concepts, “There is a need to focus on differences based on gender or race in order to avoid the development of privileged that is in the interest of the dominant sex or ethnic group” (Riddell, 2009).
The YMCA is located in Houghton-le-Spring, which is on the outskirts of Sunderland, it is a white majority community and there are very few people that are not of white British nationality other than the local convenience store owner who is of Pakistan origin and the local fish and chip shop owners who originate from Indian. The young people seemed to have built a good relationship with the shop owners as they visit the local shops on daily basis and always seem to greet one another when I have been present. The organisation is based in a former mining town, the residents of Houghton-le-Spring as a whole, is older than the national average. The population of Houghton-le-Spring is also older than the average, making Houghton-le-Spring an older person’s location.
During my time at the YMCA I worked as an informal educator during the day and during the evening I worked for the DSS (disability, support, session).
The morning sessions consisted of three workers one of whom was me and twelve young people, four females and eight males, mostly white/ British nationality apart from one young man who is a Nigerian and practices Islam. The group were aged between twelve and sixteen, it become evident through building relationships with the young people that they did not come from money. The young people either come from single parent families, some lived under the care of social services and others come from families that had lived on benefits all their life.
One young man who was from Nigeria and was visually impaired, was referred to the YMCA from a mainstream school, he was deemed vulnerable, despite our organization not been equipped to support him with his learning, the building did not have the safety features it required, to make it a safe environment for the young man, there was two sets of stairs one going up into the games room and a set of stairs going down into the TV room. This made the young man feel isolated and segregated and none of the young people fully understood his condition, all they saw was a young black Muslim male with glasses, who doesn’t want to engage with them. There were many issues that the young man faced, one been the only black person in the YMCA, two he wore the traditional Nigerian clothes that also symbolized his religion so was not wearing the latest fashionable clothes that the others did and thirdly he had a disability.
The young man who goes by the name John was verbally abused one day while I was at work, due to his visual impairment, he walked in the path way of another young person, John was partially sighted in both eyes and getting around for him was difficult John sometimes required assistance especially when using the stairs but nobody was there to guide him however the young people were very supportive towards one another but not towards John, I assumed it was due to his differences. Not only did the young man feel rejected from mainstream school where most of his friends studied but he was also faced with oppression from the young people at the YMCA, during his lunch Breaks he would not sit around the table with the others as they would not make space for him and staff failed to rectify this“ in this situation the “new man” oppressed does not see himself been oppressed, “the vision of the new man is individualistic; because of his identification with the oppressors, they have no consciousness of themselves as persons or as members of an oppressed class” ( Freire, 2008).
When I overheard the young person been racially abusive to john, I was left thinking what would be the correct way to approach this, Tim Souphommasane stated in his article “how can we do the right thing when it concerns racism, after all very few people would be in dispute about what is right and what is wrong” we all know what racism is when we see it “yet there is not always clarity about the best way to respond” (Souphommasane, 2014). I decided to ask the young person why he thought it was ok to use derogatory terms towards John about his skin color, he should have been understanding when John walked in his was, as the young people were aware of john disability.
I decided to use reflective practice such as, “processing” “debriefing”, and “feedback” as this is vital when teaching social justice. Marianne Adams mentioned the “processing and feedback help participants understand their impact on each other” (Adams, Bell and Griffin, 1997) I decided to ask the young person why he reacted in that way and how might the young man feel who was on the receiving end of the racial comments. I decided to speak with my manager and see if we could get a spokesperson to speak to the young people concerning racism and a I opt to run a session around disabilities and tried to relate what I was talking about to members of the young people family to tease out empathy.
John was being oppressed by members of the group because of his disability and skin color, this ties in with intersectionality concept, which is a way of theorizing the systems of oppression that has constructed the numerous identities and social locations in hierarchy of rights and power. As John did not react to the awful comments that were made, it was evident that he who is being “oppressed has adapted to the structure of domination in which they are immersed, and have become resigned to it” (Freire, 2000). I always found myself challenging young people racist views, for example one young person spoke about how their grandmother said, there’s not many British people left and how the country was over populated with Muslims. I had the young person look at the national statistic website so they could have look at the makeup of ethnicities in Britain. It was a way of getting them to realise that not everything you hear it true. I also held a session on the first world war where I was able to speak about how Muslim soldiers who fought for Britain.
It’s bad enough the media making young people feel that wearing glasses somehow makes them different and less attractive, they start to believe they are different and that in order to gain acceptance he or she must work harder in building relationships, either through becoming a nuisance to draw attention or otherwise become withdrawn, and bullied in which case John was. This ties in with the labelling theory, Deviant behaviour this behaviour is what people so label." The way out is a refusal to dramatize the evil”. The labelling theory links to great sociological concepts of Durkheim the symbolic interactionism and the conflict theory. The theory also draws from the idea of Thomas (1928) that when people define situations as real they become real in their consequences.
Staff didn’t really pay much attention to the young man, he was treated differently from the rest because he wasn’t kicking off like the others, so they assumed he was ok and just naturally quiet it didn’t occur to them that he might have felt separated due to the oppression from staff and his peers, staff rarely engage with the young man and whenever there was upskills for the young people to do, John wasn’t even acknowledged, despite needing more help due to his disability. It was like it was too much work for them. He would be left on the main floor which did not require him to use stairs, so while the others were playing in the games room, john would be left sitting in the canteen area on the main floor, I would often sit with the young man despite the lack of communication on his part, which could be due to the way he was treated, he did mention on one occasion that he didn’t feel as though he fits in and others don’t seem to like him.
Through vigilance it was evident that equal treatment was not present regarding the staff towards the young people.
The young man was treated differently because he could not partake in certain activities due to his visual impairment, religion, he was also targeted because of his skin colour and he didn’t not want to engage because he felt as those he wasn’t valued by his peers, acknowledging difference is used here as a reasoning for some degree of unequal social outcome, although worrying questions remain about how far individual choices and identities may be viewed as independent of the social structures within which they are formed.
“Muslims in Britain are smeared by all sides of the political divide. The right often portrays them as outsiders, an uncivilized people whose faith is incompatible with Western life, represented by pantomime villains like that hook-handed freak Abu Hamza” ( International business times, 2014) it is this kind of misleading information that contributes to the divide in our society and consequently increases the inequalities .
Why they behaved like this, made me think it is due to what they have learnt through history, Living in a white majority estate with a large population of the elderly.
“while immigrant minorities had settled in different parts of Britain in the1970’s where their labour was sought, and discriminatory housing polices and a white flight had largely ensured spatial segregation, the presence of former imperial subjects, from a variety of rural and urban backgrounds, and with a variety of languages, religion, and cultural traditions, was openly regarded as a ‘racial threat’ to British national identity” (Tomlinson, 2008).
My assumption was based on “what I have learned about the history of the place and the whole thing started fitting into a complex pattern” (Smith, 1994). Several lining assumptions can produce a philosophical foundation for our social justice education practice, as a facilitator I must be aware of my assumptions that I may share with the young people I am working with.
In this assignment, I have identified ways that individuals can be oppressed because of the historical and cultural differences, I have also learned the importance of education young people Social justice and that it does not manifest in a particular fashion, nor is it accomplished through a precise means of teaching. Learning about this area uses critical examination of ourselves, others, institutions and events to find patterns of equality, prejudice and discrimination, and then explore possible solutions to the problems that have been identified.