A question which Alexa asked me during our tutorial... yes we all know there is a lot of discrimination in the world whether that be age, race, sex, disability, language, occupation, religion, skin colour or socioeconomic status. But why? I have read various articles around this topic and the thing which stood out to me the most was...
Babies are born without prejudice!
Babies are very unique because they view all humans as equal and our the only humans who haven't learnt the complexity of social structures. Prejudice in its true form only begins at age 3 and its us as society which teaches them about social categorisation. How can this be changed and create this behaviour shift before it is engraved in our brains?
Othering- What is it?
'Othering is a phenomena in which some individuals or groups are defined and labelled as not fitting in within the norms of a social group'- It is what influences society about how to perceive people and treat those who are viewed as being part of the in-group versus those who are seen as being part of the out-group. It is a 'us vs them' thinking about human connections and relationships.
- Othering is often subtle and involves unconscious assumptions about others
attributing positive qualities to people who are like you and negative qualities to people who are different from you
Believing people who are different to you pose a threat to you or your way of life
Refusing to interact with people because they are different from your social group.
Thinking people outside your social groups are not as intelligent, skilled or as special as you and your group
Thinking of people only in terms of their relationship with specific social groups without any thought to them as individuals.
When and why does othering occur within society?
As mentioned at the start of this post, we are born without prejudice so what happens to change this?
At a very very young age we choose friends not by predetermined characteristics or social status but often random and accidental mutual enjoyment and the only requirement needed is a shared interest and we will often mingle with a diverse range of children from a diverse variety of backgrounds if given the opportunity
It's at the beginning of high school where the shift of behaviour takes place because we have developed a greater sense of identity and a better understanding of the differences between different groups, we start to make more complicated and pre determined decisions about who to befriend.
Clear social circles form and just a shared interest was once needed to create a friendships, there is a now a much longer criteria list to meet (similar personalities, shared beliefs, similar demographic background/social status).
University/ higher education is a very important step with a choice of a single subject, we become a-lot more limited to the amount of people we meet and put together with people who share your career aspirations and often your outlook in life. This creates a very narrow perspective and create lots of tiny social circle clusters.
This then creates the current situation we are living in and why as society we are so divided, everybody we know is intrinsically similar and not well placed to challenge our perceptions of thew world around us. Instead of social cohesion we have social isolation.
We have been taught by society and the education system that we belong in different groups and that these different groups are intractable and unchangeable, and the minute we meet someone we can "already tell" if were going to get on and we judge that by the category they belong too.
This has been a really interesting topic to explore further and has really helped me developed my thinking about how communities and society works. This is just the start about why its happening, I want to know how this could be approached to create change and and why its so important to stop stereotypes influence our behaviours.
Tx
All the below points were the main findings and the points (which got me most interested and thinking the most) from a mixture of articles from world economic forum = I will attach a link to this website if you would like to give it a read and find out more about these really interesting topic, I found the ones with the themes around social innovation most insightful. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/social-enterprises-can-have-a-big-impact/.
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