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Daniel John Carter ST09003304 Youth and Community Education
Mark Jones Equality Issues in Community Education
COE 223 What theories best explain the process of discrimination?
Due: 4/11/2010 Words: 2740
2 What theories best explain the process of discrimination? To answer this we should first determine what is discrimination. British law recognises two kinds of discrimination; direct and indirect. To clarify this a little more, direct discrimination has been described by the National Union of Students as ‘treating a person or group less favourably than another in the same situation, usually on account of their race, gender, disability, age, sexual orientation or religion’ (NUS, 2010). The Department for Business Innovation & Skills (2010) suggests that ‘Indirect discrimination refers to applying a provision, criterion or practice which disadvantages people of a particular group’ which again is often based on areas like race, gender, etc. It then goes on to state that ‘indirect discrimination is illegal if it cannot be justified as a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’ (Department for Business Innovation & Skills, 2010). These ‘legal’ definitions are useful in establishing whether discrimination has occurred in a given ‘legal’ situation, but in my view may fail to recognise the root causes of inequalities in our society, and the multi-faceted nature of discriminatory and oppressive practice. Social behaviour is largely determined by the culture we live in; our views on what we think is ’right’, or ‘normal’, according to our beliefs and attitudes, common codes of practice, politics, religion and ethnicity. However this can also perpetuate social divisions, prejudice and discriminatory practice through legitimation. We seek to justify our discriminatory behaviour on the grounds of our laws, our religion, our culture, our politics, or our social standing and power. We then set up institutions to safeguard and legitimate the status quo. If we are to escape this cycle of deprivation and discrimination, professional practice must challenge oppression and promote the benefits of equality. In my view the legitimation of discrimination needs to be recognised, and counteracted in order to promote a fairer society. I will now consider what the different theories on the process of discrimination contribute to these issues.
There are many theories which describe the process of discrimination, Thompson (1997) developed the PCS (personal, cultural and structural) theory to analyse the workings of oppression. This model consists of three levels; the personal level, the cultural level and the structural level. Wood (2001) describes the personal level as ‘an individual’s views’ as well as ‘purely related to individual actions’. He then goes on to state that the personal level ‘is located in the middle of the diagram, because that individual has his (or her) beliefs and ideas supported through two other levels’ Wood (2001). The cultural level consists of what is normal for the society that that person resides in, this can include whether racism or sexism is acceptable to the level of help a
3 disabled or poor person might receive. It is the ‘interests and influence of society as reflected in the social values and cultural norms we internalise via the process of socialisation e.g. racist, sexist jokes’ Noden (2009). The structural level is the area where the institutions that surround the person’s culture and society affect their values or beliefs. These institutions can subdue or intensify these values and beliefs. Wood (2001) confirms this by suggesting that ‘This analysis demonstrates how oppression is ‘sewn into the fabric’ of society through institutions that support both cultural norms and personal beliefs’. I believe this model has the ability to accurately analyse the process that creates prejudice within an individual person, but not the process of actual discrimination. For this I believe some other theories will have to be looked at and if they are processes, analysed as well as compare to actual practice. The next process I will look at is Thompson’s eight processes. Thompson’s eight processes include literally eight processes or ‘methods’ of discrimination. The first of these is dehumanisation, Burgess and Burgess (2003) state dehumanisation as ‘a psychological process whereby opponents view each other as less than human and thus not deserving of moral consideration’. Obvious examples of this are the cartoons of Jewish people during the period of Nazi Germany where they were draw to look more like animals such as pigs. Dehumanisation is an effective method of removing the natural guilt that comes with the mistreatment and abuse of actual human beings. The next process mentioned by Thompson (1997) is Infantilization, this is treating someone as if there as much younger than they are or treating someone as if they are an infant. In my opinion this is a regular occurrence within schools and youth centres as individuals mature at different levels. The third process is Medicalization, this is ‘to identify or categorize (a condition or behaviour) as being a disorder requiring medical treatment or intervention’ (Farlex, 2010). An example of discrimination could be separating a young person or treating them differently educationally or socially because they have been diagnosed with a disorder such as autism or attention deficit disorder. Thompson’s (1997) fourth process is Marginalization which can discriminate in many areas of society. One which affects young people is the area of education. ‘Marginalization in education is fuelled by structural disadvantages, bad policies, and neglect by political leaders’ (UNESCO, 2010). In the UK such educational discrimination can be seen on an economic level such as the class divides between private and state education. The next process mentioned is Welfarism with aspects of it primarily set up to be inclusive. It can also be used to segregate and discriminate. The basic definition of Welfarism is stated by Farlex (2010) as ‘the set of policies, practices, and social attitudes associated with a welfare state’. The Citizens Advice Bureau (2006) claims that such discrimination occurs with the Welfare Reform Bill’s ‘single room rent restriction rule (SRR) limits housing benefit for under 25s to the average local rent for shared accommodation’. Such a rule has results that mean ‘vulnerable young people are suffering because an obscure welfare rule caps the amount of help they can receive towards their rent’ (Citizens Advice Bureau, 2006). After Welfarism is the process of Invisibilization, to quite literally hide the selected group
4 of people and the visible discrimination against them from the rest of society. This comes in many forms; in the UK it can be seen in the housing of mentally ill people in special hospitals rather than community rehabilitation. Worldwide the process of invisibilization has been used to hide the rights, problems as well as the identities of ethnic minorities and indigenous populations. ‘The invisibilization of the indigenous in Costa Rica has been pervasive and with it, so has been the blindness to their needs and the loss of their culture’ (Aragón, 2010). The penultimate process in Thompson’s (1997) eight processes is Trivialisation. Farlex (2010) defines Trivialisation as ‘to make or cause to appear trivial’ and example of this couple be a tabloid press publishing headlines that make the effects of immigration on the native population seem much worse than they actually are. The final process is Stereotyping, properly one of the most used and known processes of discrimination. ‘Stereotypes are the extreme misuse of categories: a person is judged on the basis of one quality, e.g. age, sex, culture or occupation, when people of, for instance, the same culture vary considerably in personality’ (Myers et al., 1998). Examples of stereotypes can assuming that a black young person entering your youth centre will try to steal something or has been smoking cannabis. Many stereotypes exist including that of young people from low income families or areas are assumed to be more likely to cause trouble and that more affluent young people are ‘snobs’. Stereotypes exist, and their existence can lead to prejudice and if a person acts on their prejudgment of another it becomes discrimination. As stereotypes are rife and heavily maintained by family, society, media etc. they are one of the biggest causes of discrimination within the UK, Europe, and possibly the world. One of the most controversial theories on a process of discrimination is legitimation. Legitimation is defined as ‘Being in accordance with established or accepted patterns and standards’ (Farlex, 2010). What must first be established is that legitimation is a process, process that has the ability to legalise or make discrimination a social norm. It is a normalisation method that attempts to make discrimination acceptable. Legitimation is usually perceived as a legal act or document but it does not always have to be a legal process, it can be the acceptable norm within family, friends and social groups whether that is a small church group or the European Union. Such norms within a society can be formed due to many different reasons such as fear, morality, legal issues, biology and culture. Fear promotes security norms within social groups a recent example is the increase and general acceptability of Islamophobia in Western countries post the 9/11 tragedy. Security norms a fluid and changeable or at least the main focus is regularly changing, it was only 10 – 15 years ago that instead of being dark and Islamic, having an Irish accent and being Catholic made you the focus of security discrimination. Legitimation can be seen within the youth work setting in the bureaucracy, in centre based work especially a youth support officer has to state how many ethnic, disabled and what genders attended. Numbers also have to be stated on how many of these groups took part in activities offered; words are used like disabled, ethnic, inclusive and mainstream. Some people within the service think of this as positive discrimination, whereas other seeing it as keeping the barriers active by keeping the names in regular use. There are moral norms that appear from legitimisation as well, examples include that of
5 the privately educated are ‘more’ intelligent and that adults know what’s better for the youth centre than the young people. Moral norms exist because society generally says it is so, although they can exist on a smaller setting. For example a young person may find it legitimate that people who are Islamic are better than others; this is in existence because his or her personal, cultural and structural (PCS) background has suggested it. Classism is a prime example of a legitimate moral norm for discrimination ‘the notion of class is a way of dividing people up in terms of their social position and economic ranking’ (Thompson, 2007:92). In a capitalist society it is not only normal, but essential to divide people up based on their financial status. In these societies, in general, a whole person’s identity can rest on their economic background. Young people without families are the most likely to be out of work and have little in the way of finances therefore ‘the UK Border Agency is to set up a £4m "reintegration centre" in Afghanistan so that it can start deporting unaccompanied child asylum seekers to Kabul from Britain’ (Travis, 2010). Yet four out of the five richest people in the UK are foreign born ‘the Duke of Westminster was ranked at number five in the list behind four nonBritons, including Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich who is worth £10.8bn’ (BBC, 2007). Therefore with Classism, a division based on economics, all other common discriminations such as racism, sexism, etc. are overturned. As long as you have money, you are at the top and society says this is legitimate. People usually associate legitimation with legal issues and this may be because it creates a large amount of legal norms. These include such areas as legal/illegal immigration which creates a national in and out group. Also until recently it was legitimate that homosexual to be denied the same rights, such as marriage, was ok and even now it is now 100% equal to the right of heterosexuals. Young people are legitimately discriminated against legal with a legal age of consent for sex, drinking, voting, etc. Young people also receive legitimated discrimination on a biological level. An adult is (generally) physically stronger than a ten year old and they are also generally more intelligent. This is due to nature and cannot be changed and just goes to show that whether it is for the good of society or the species existence some discrimination is needed at certain points. Mark Jones (2010) stated that ‘normalisation and legitimation of discrimination are underpinned by power’. So the question is what is power? Power has been described as a ‘theoretical concept’ (Thompson, 2007:4) and therefore different people have different views of what power is. The real matter in hand is how power effects equality and its implications on discrimination. ‘Everyone has some degree of power, but of course, some people are in more power than others’ Thompson (2007:4). This is true, but it is also true that different groups, communities and societies have different levels of power over each other. A group of youth workers, in today’s setting, have a level of power over the young people, but in turn how they use that power is to, some level controlled by their individual boss. A similar process to Thompson’s (1997) PCS model is Bandura’s (1963) social learning theory. ‘Social learning theory explains human behaviour in terms of continuous reciprocal interaction between cognitive, behavioural, and environmental influences’ (Learning Theories, 2008). It was based on have a child learns social behaviour by observing a model (generally an adult) that is important in their lives. Yet further
6 experiments have suggested that the importance of the model in the child’s life is not as big a factor. After discussing an experiment with nursery school children Nicholson, Bayne and Owen (2006:23) suggested ‘it might be the qualities possessed by the model rather than the importance in the child’s life that makes them effective’. The social learning theory is a very good theory in relation to the PCS (Thompson, 1997) model, but like the PCS model only reflects a narrow area of how discrimination can develop rather than a number of processes that can be put to use. In my opinion it is one of the building blocks needed in understanding a large issue. The final process I will examine is social constructionism. ‘This approach attempts to explain human experience (subjectively) as an ideological venture rather than an essentially biological one, and so human social and individual actions might be understood as deriving from dominant social values rather than individual values’ (Nicolson, Bayne and Owen, 2006:29). This can be seen in a youth work setting by working within different areas, in some areas young people are socially excluded by groups for anything from liking the wrong type of music to being of the minority race in the area. Socially this forces young people to either pretend or start to prefer the majorities’ trend and sometimes try to hide their race, background religion etc. Social constructionism not only depicts how majority can rule but also how those with power can divide society. In my opinion an excellent example of division by social constructionism is classism, created by economic conditions; it separates young people especially on a massive scale. It creates a situation where they live, are educated, spend time and receive health care in completely different places and along with it, due to constructed prejudice, are treated differently by security services such as the police. It may be suggest that this is the case because the more affluent people in society are the majority of the most powerful people in British politics. Social constructionism exists, like most processes, through the collaboration of other processes. In conclusion, the various theories discussed above collectively present a broad view of the process of discrimination. Thomson’s PCS model and his 8 processes provide a particularly useful social perspective on the topic. I have already expressed the view that the legitimation of discrimination is a root social cause of on-going inequalities, and that this needs to be recognised, understood and counteracted in order to promote a fairer society. Professional practice is informed by these theories. However, there are other theoretical perspectives on discrimination which should also be considered. Power politics and other social perspectives; also the theoretical perspectives of behavioural and educational psychology are two such areas. Professional practice needs to take account of individual circumstances and case work, as well as the wider environmental conditions. Each case in different and requires an individual assessment and approach based on individual needs. The theoretical blueprint as expressed in the process models is not all encompassing. Professional practitioners need to take a multi-faceted approach when considering the nature of discrimination.
7 Bibliography • • • • • •
Thompson, N (2007). Power and Empowerment. Lyme Regis, Dorset: Russel House Publishing. p4-92. Nicolson, P., Bayne, R. and Owen, J (2006). Applied Psychology for Social Workers. 3rd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. p23-29. Harrison, R. and Wise, C (2005). Working with Young People. London: SAGE. p142149. Jeffs, T. and Smith, M K. (2005). Informal Education: Conversation, Democracy and Learning. Nottingham: Educational Heretics Press. p46-47. Freire, P (1970). Pegagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin. p17-52. Roche, J., Tucker, S., Thomson, R. and Flynn, R. (2004). Youth in Society. 2nd ed. London: SAGE. p53-54.
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