Discrimination
starts with one person deciding they don’t like something about another person.
It might be what they believe. It could be about how they look. It could be
what they do. This is then generalised to a group of people. So for instance,
an person disagrees with a green person who believes the world is flat. They begin to see all the green people who believe the world is
flat. They don’t notice all the green people who believe the world is round,
all they see are the green people who believe the world is flat. Suddenly they
start to think that all green people believe the world is flat.
This
sounds like a simplification and is.
I
get quite scared at the speed with which human beings pick up on someone else’s
spite. I am scared of the group mentality which works so quickly to ostracise
the “outsider”, the “problem” person. I see this happening all the time and I
feel scared. Scared about the long term consequences of this type of behaviour.
I remember what happened in Nazi Germany during WWII where the powers that be
decided that one group of people were less than and needed to be exterminated.
In
Australia right now, smokers are the pariah. Television
commercials are telling us just how dangerous smoking it and how dangerous it
is for everyone around us. To the point where on a talk back radio the other
day, I heard that people who smoke in their cars should have something bad
happen to them (I’ve forgotten the consequences this person suggested), and
that all bush fires were started by people throwing cigarettes out of their
windows.
It
is so easy to “prove” that one person, one group of people, are “bad”, “less
than”, pariahs. Take Jane Elliott’s Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Exercise
(http://www.janeelliott.com/index.htm).
In
1968 when Martin Luther King was murdered, Jane Elliott, a teacher, devised the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes
Exercise to teach her Grade 3 children, what it felt like to be a minority. In
this day and age, she would never have been allowed to do this, but in 1968,
she was. I have listened to the videos and I recommend that everyone do. They
are a very powerful example of how quickly people can be convinced of the
“goodness” of their own views and the “badness” of other people’s points of
view. These can be seen http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html
Watching
the videos I could see how quickly people (and not just children) become part
of this discrimination. Suddenly, whatever the person says or does is part of
their “badness” and not just part of human nature. If the person makes a
mistake, it is not because they are human, but because they are green. If you
argue, you become the butt of the nastiness; if you agree, you become part of
the “upper” class and have privileges and get lots of positive strokes for being
part of the “upper” or “in” crowd.
We
can see examples throughout time, big ones like in Nazi German; and small ones
in schools and organisations. Discrimination can be aimed at all the green
people in the world; or it can be aimed at the individuals who does not believe
the world is flat.
Degradation
and humiliation are part and parcel of discrimination. As are a sense of
humiliation and helplessness on the part of the discriminee. Anonymity of the top group means that these
people can do whatever they like. Violence is the ultimate outcome.
There
have been other studies done about how top groups will beat up on minority
groups (Milgram, Zimbardo are two of them) and the impact on both groups of
people.
It
is very important to remember that humans are just that. They are humans. When
a bunch of humans join together, they can become less than human, they can lose their
humanity and become like a pack of animals who simply kill the weaker of their
species. Discrimination makes people weaker simply by the way it works.
"Oh,
Great Spirit, keep me from ever judging a man until I have walked a mile in his
moccasins." The Sioux prayer and very relevant today.
Madeleine
Saturday,
24 June 2006
