Learning about and accepting 'differences' has made a huge shift in our awareness. But I wonder, if this focus on what makes us different actually points us all in the wrong direction.
We are generally pretty good at accepting differences, aren't we? And, we have names (and shames) for when we are not. Who want's to be racist, homophobic, anti-semitic, chauvinistic, islamophobic or openly predjudiced towards anyone who is different? And yet, there is never a time when there isn't at least one of these problems dominating our headlines. It seems like we need a new law every day to protect another difference from discrimination. And, on a personal level, there is no end to being offended all the time.
When my kids started school, there was the girl with the yellow hair and the boy with glasses and the blue jumper, the other boy with brown skin and the girl with the 'hood that she never takes off' and that was that. No judgement, no preference, just curious observation. Now, they are 6 and 10 years old and every time someone says 'brown' or (worse even) 'black' in any context, one of them would shout 'Don't say that, it's racist!' We can't say 'ball' in our house without being called sexist, for some reason, and when I offered some crisps to a child during Ramadan, my 10-year old told me off for tempting people to break their fast. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that my kids learn about religions and customs, that they are being taught to be respectful and aware. But if we expect everyone to be that mindful all the time, there are bound to be pitfalls. I get, that for my kids it is a phase where they enjoy taking things to the extreme. But this feels like a general trend, which just seems to point away from what we're really trying to achieve.
I recently worked with a group of 11-year olds at a school to help them get a better understanding of their feelings. We talked about what feelings are, where they come from, what they tell us and how they change all the time. The whole programme was designed to help year 6 children to approach their SATs and the transition into secondary school with less anxiety and stress. Over the course of the whole programme, I noticed that the children were immensely versed in talking about how we are all different and special and unique. But not much focus had been placed on things we all have in common.
They have learned that we all look, think, speak, feel and behave differently. They have studied customs of the main religions and knew that certain comments on those would be unacceptable and sanctioned. They were taught about their rights and how not to compromise others'. They all knew what the word 'bullying' means and how being bullied can be a pretty ugly experience. I then asked who had been bullied before and almost everyone raised their hands. When I asked who had bullied, still half of the 30 kids owned up. I was truly puzzled, how so much awareness can have so little effect.
Learning about our differences is a huge improvement to a time when we wouldn't know anything about anyone outside our close communities. The problem I see is that we can only point out what is different by comparing 'them and us' no matter what side we are on. And it seems like no matter how lovingly this is done, as long as they are not 'us', they are still outside of the norm, which is typically 'us'. This way, acceptance is a learned behaviour, a code of conduct, much more than really appreciating each other and what we all bring with us.
The children were surprised to learn that, fundamentally, all people on earth operate the same way. We all create our feelings and our experiences of the world in exactly the same way, completely independent of hair or skin colour, religion, social status and whether we wear glasses or braces, whether we are rich or poor. The reason it feels and looks so differently for each of us is that we create our own little version of the world based on our own personal thinking. Understanding this, creates a totally level playing field in which differences simply lose their weight. It was interesting to see how views shifted, when we talked about our unique specialness, as a creative expression rather than something set in stone and unchangable, which we have to protect. We looked at things we use to express our personalities or 'specialness' with, and realised that most, if not all of them are totally made up.
Taken the hairstyle, job, status, hobby, behaviour, talent, passion, disability, money or the lack of it away, it would essentially make no difference to 'who we really are'. If it wasn't for the thinking we attach to them, most of the differences we see are merely choices we make and decide to turn them into a thing about 'us' or 'them'. You may say we can't choose our skin colour or social background, sex, education, religion, eyesight, physique or disabilities. NO, we can't, but we can choose whether any of these should be the defining characteristics, that we were given and now have to live with and defend against anyone that might recognise them as different. There are endless examples of people who decided not to.
What would it take to shift the whole focus away from fussing over 'differences' to an understanding that in essence we are all the same?
I believe that looking at differences as creative ways of making our sameness more interesting would be a far more inclusive idea. It would take a lot of tension away. It would make us realise that we take our specialness far too seriously and that ultimately, there is no ground for discriminating against anyone. Exploring differences from this angle would make learning about the world and all its colours so much more positive.
Just a thought, I would love to hear yours...
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