Friday 17 October 2014

Empowerment of Person as Affirmative Action

The richest 1% of the world own half the world's wealth that is inequality.

But why would 99% of the world sit around and some in dire poverty and maintain a status quo. Why not demand affirmative action

Affirmative action is defined as
  1. Affirmative action or positive discrimination (known as employment equity in Canada, reservation in India and Nepal, and positive action in the UK) is the policy of favoring members of a disadvantaged group who are perceived to suffer from discrimination within a culture.
PERCEPTION
As a first step to overcoming inequality it is important to understand who is the perceiving party. Does the person who appears to suffer from discrimination feel that they are disadvantaged or do they need us to tell them that they are badly off and life could be better for them.

Within a culture - cultures are different. Colonialists in Africa believed that they were more civilized than their colonies hence a justification for colonialism. In Wikipedia defined as 
"the distinct ways that people, who live differently, classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively"

MY POINT
  • It is key to have a benchmark such as the 30 Articles on Human Rights (below) before judging that some sort of discrimination is happening and that the benchmark can be reviewed for inclusiveness 
  • It is key to understanding another's perception and another's culture before deciding that they suffer discrimination. 

  • It is key for the discriminated party to feel that they need to change their situation otherwise any intervention will be unsustainable or useless

  • It is key for the discriminated party to feel they can get this equal treatment or equity by themselves rather than being dependent on other people to get this for them.


EMPOWERMENT
  • The discriminated party is able to challenge stereotypes E.g. of a stereotype Men make better leaders than Women

  • The discriminated party is able to identify labels as false or not a complete definition of the human person e.g. Sex worker or prostitute describes my job not my parenting skills, not my personality, not my values 

  • The discriminated party is ready to take on cultural rebellion i.e. represent your experiences differently as you have been taught or as is conventionally represented 

  • The discriminated party is ready to identify themselves as human with infinite possibilities e.g. even if you live in a third world country living under a dollar a day you believe that you can access learning and opportunity and you have a role to change your life

END OF STORY

If 99% of us feel that this story is not right and that the world's wealth is unequally distributed then we can change it. 
If 99% of us spend our lives trying to be like the one percent who own the world and do not really feel that this a bad balance then the status quo will remain

If we want to help anyone through Non Governmental organizations and Social entrepreneurship then the greatest help we can give is seeing them want to help themselves and change their story