As Humans being we are constantly comparing and judging creatures on the whole. We establish pecking orders over a wide range of human experiences and human differences. Development in human oppression work, which has been coined the “ism-ism,” is the drive in some quarters to assign value judgments to the various “isms.” This thoughtful development is that we attempt to assign value to degrees of pain and suffering caused by issues of oppression.
To treat people fairly you need to treat people differently.
For example, much debate now takes place about which is worse, racism or sexism, disablism and so on.
Other “isms” such as heterosexism or anti-semitism are also routinely denied or devalued as illegitimate. Pecking orders of oppressions are frequently established on the basis of visibility of source of the oppression (for example skin colour or sex, disability), the assumption of having a choice on the matter (of sexual orientation), or the ability to hide it (as in social “passing” by virtue of a hidden disability e.g. dyslexia). The establishment of formally ranked groups of oppressions is, fundamentally, a disagreement in terms.
Traditional economic commentators comment that institutions influence decisions by imposing constraints under which purely selfish individuals maximize their usefulness. There is plenty of evidence, however, that in many situations individuals are also guided by social norms or preferences such as equality. The worry with equality is since the worst thing that can happen in human relationships is to find oneself living at the mercy of another.
This is what commentators have observed is the state of nature.
Natural inequality – physical differences, age differences and race difference, and gender difference, sexual orientation difference leads to moral inequality, economic inequality.
Most humans have not experienced interactions based on this hard to pin down concept of equality. As a consequence, we lack a pool of experiences to help us establish relationships with one another that are not Darwinian in nature and about power (“up-ness”) and of less importance (“down-ness”).
Our real or perceived place on the human food chain determines our personal as well as combined worldview. The fortunate are much more likely to experience the world as being just and fair. The unfortunate are much more likely to experience the world as being unjust and unfair. This may also have an influence on hopefulness and distrust scales as it having relevance to entire societies.
We generally keep down one another around the areas of our biology, history, and culture the very areas that are central to our definition of self and identity in our society. In addition, the aspects of our human race that are most threatened in a given cultural, societal context also become the aspects that eventually form the very heart of our identity in that culture and society. For example, a person may define himself as a Black British in a given cultural context and as a British black in another.
All societies assign both unearned privilege (advantage) as well as unearned prejudice (disadvantage) to various aspects of our biology, our history, and our culture. We are generally more aware of the dynamics of prejudice in our lives than we are of the dynamics of privilege.
Ironically, many people feel excluded from equality and diversity agendas, example of this were in the media on White working class people are losing out on several fronts, from education to housing, a report argues.
Most organisations, or individuals for that matter, have not defined equality and diversity for themselves and or understood it with its deep implications. Basic use of inoffensive phase such as “celebrate human differences” or “celebrate diversity”, for example, do not take into consideration the fact that a certain section of the human family arrives on planet earth at different starting points.
As we struggle with issues of equality and diversity, we must question how much human diversity we are personally and institutionally willing to stand for and celebrate.
Like many other things in our human experience, the centre pieces of equality and diversity are contact, culture, complexity, and conflict.
People fear what is unfamiliar or what they do not understand. Within this context, therefore, there is as much “inequality” as there is equality.
Fear is the glue that holds prejudice in place.
As our shared morals awaken to the discovery and realisation of the multiple ways in which we dehumanise one another, our organisations.
- How do we uphold the potential of Equality of Opportunity?
- What do you think?
- Why does it matter?
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