This
has been the subject of discussion, policy development and conferences in
recent months so I thought I would take some time to reflect on what was being
asked and what was being said on these issues. I was genuinely surprised at the
lack of knowledge on the Equality Act and on Protected Characteristics – but
more on them later!
Probably
the best place to start would be with prejudice – to ‘pre-judge’
Noun
2. Any
preconceived opinion or feeling, either favourable or unfavourable.
So,
everyone can be and is likely to have some prejudices – some things we have favourable
views towards and some less so. When we act on this prejudice and treat people
less favourably, we are discriminating.
Bullying, as has been covered in many of these blogs, is a
mixture of behaviour and impact that affect a person’s capacity to feel in
control of themselves. This is what we term as their sense of ‘agency’.
Bullying takes place in the context of relationships; it is behaviour that can
make people feel hurt, threatened, frightened and left out.
When this behaviour is motivated by prejudice, we are
talking about prejudice-based bullying.
Prejudice will be based on a personal characteristic or a
group that someone either belongs to or people believe they belong to or
identify with. So what might these
characteristics be? Their gender? Are
they gay? Is it their religion? Do they have a disability? Or is it how they
look or what they wear? It can be any of these and more.
So why
are some personal characteristics mentioned more than others?
Some personal characteristics are protected within the
law – the reason for this is to address the imbalance – to address the years of
unfavourable
treatment experienced by some groups over the years
The experience of women, of LGBT people, of black
people or of people with a disability, has shown that they have received
less favourable
treatment in many ways over the years – in terms of being picked on, excluded
and not having equal access to employment
and education. This was initially responded to through legislation such
the Race Relations Act 1976, that ‘outlawed discrimination’ or the Equal Pay
Act 1970, that was intended to address the less favourable treatment of women in the workplace.
Legislation such as the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, was also intended to
address discrimination on gender and married status. These Acts were needed
specifically because of the imbalance and the unfair treatment these groups were clearly
receiving.
This
has evolved and led to the Equality Act 2010 which is designed to protect
people from discrimination in the workplace and the wider community such as in Education
or as a consumer. This Act sets out that it is unlawful to discriminate
against a person due to the following personal characteristics -
- age
- being or becoming a
transsexual person
- being married or in a
civil partnership
- being pregnant
or having a child
- disability
- race including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin
- religion, belief or lack
of religion/belief
- sex
- sexual orientation
Based on the historical prejudice and discrimination
experienced by people who have these, or are perceived to have these
characteristics, they now warrant special protection under the law to address
the inequality they experienced. These characteristics are protected and as
such are referred to as The Protected
Characteristics. Age and being married do not apply in Education.
Public examples of this have been highlighted in the
media such as cases where people who refuse a service like a hotel room to same
sex couples or build new schools that are inaccessible to wheelchairs, will be
in breach of the Equality Act.
I get asked a lot why red hair, wearing glasses or being
tall or overweight isn’t a protected characteristic too, people experience
bullying for these reasons also. One of
the most common reasons young people cite for bullying is personal appearance
–that could be related to the music they like or the income of their parents.
The answer to this is that while people do get picked on
and excluded for a variety of reasons, the groups protected under law have
clear historical evidence of societal and cultural exclusion and less favourable
treatment. It may sound a little glib – but once all of the tall people get
together and can reflect on and evidence years of collective exclusion, not
getting work, missing out on promotion, being made to take only certain lessons
at school like home economics, receiving abuse or suffering violence and
intimidation on a collective basis ; then that too may become a legally
protected characteristic.
This does not in any way mean that the bullying of a
person because of the way they look is less serious or not as important as
bullying based on a protected characteristic. The protected characteristics are
not designed to create a hierarchy but to help address the imbalance
experienced by certain groups. We know from our work that children and young
people who are disabled, who are or are perceived to be LGB or T can experience
bullying more frequently than other groups – this just means we need to be
aware of and be able to challenge what values and prejudice lies behind this
behaviour.
We also know that children and young people bully others
because they don’t get on or they don’t like each other – we sometimes forget
the interpersonal elements of bullying situations. You might not like a person
who is gay or a different faith from you but that is not the reason you dislike them – a person is
cable of disliking someone and being mean about them without using a personal
characteristic, protected or not, as the topic for their insult or behaviour.
There is a difference between ‘I can’t
stand him he is a pain and he talks rubbish’ and ‘I can’t stand him, he’s a black (insert whatever word/insult here)’. The latter is a clear example of a
prejudice-based statement based on someone’s race or ethnicity.
Research has informed us that where polices are explicit
about what they mean by prejudice-based bullying, where we name specific
behaviour they find unacceptable – adults and young people feel more confident
to challenge these prejudices and behaviour .
Policies that don’t mention things like homophobia,
disability, race or even socio economic status are linked to environments where
adults are unsure about challenging certain behaviour and language. This
explicit commitment to equality and challenging inequality is clearly linked to
better practice in dealing with and preventing prejudiced-based bullying.
Schools, services or clubs that are clear that
they will challenge homophobia, that they will challenge bullying based on
disability, race or ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, transgender status,
religion and belief, socio economic status, appearance, if children are Looked
After, are young carers or are refugees or their families are asylum seekers,
will be creating environments that value difference and set out clear
expectations about what behaviour is acceptable and what is not. Adults can
then be held accountable to this as can children and young people.
This though presents a further challenge for the
grown-ups. Are you confident to challenge prejudice? All prejudices or just the
ones you object to? Confidently challenging some prejudice will be easy for
many people – our own values and those of our chosen profession are compatible
and we have the knowledge and passion to challenge and educate. Some of us need
to get better informed on some areas – help is available form a range of agencies
if you want to learn more about asylum seekers or migrants, about transgender
people or a particular disability.
We normally learn more about things when we need to. When
we are presented with behaviour or attitudes we don’t know much about, we go and
find out about the issue to be better informed – the desire to do this is
underpinned by values of fairness and equality. So what about the people whose
personal values are perhaps not as ‘in-step’ as others?
You may well work or have worked beside someone who is
misogynistic, who says racist things, is sectarian perhaps and this only
appears on nights out or in the staff room or on social media.
I do find myself saying to colleagues that we are not the
thought police – we cannot tell people what to think or that they are not
allowed an opinion – what we can do is hold people accountable to the legal and
ethical boundaries of their role or profession. The reality is if a person is even a little
prejudiced towards things like equal marriage, Syrian Refugees or women being
as good as men at their job - this will be evident in how they challenge these
prejudices. If adults have these
prejudices they will not effectively challenge behaviour because it conflicts
with their values.
Our values underpin what we do and they will always make
themselves evident – some people are good at telling you what their values are
at interviews but not so good at showing these when they hear certain
language. They will say thing like ‘You are not allowed to say things like that here’
or ‘someone might find that offensive’
or actually say and do nothing because they agree with what is being said. When
prejudiced language or bullying challenges your values – you will challenge it
with passion and clarity, and people will believe you.
Inequality is a huge issue for society – we are
addressing historical and cultural issues and responsibility for this rests
with people at all levels – not just those who work with our children and young
people.
So what
can I do?
While these are huge cultural issues we can, as
individuals and organisations, give children and young people a better
experience, a different experience that values them, one that challenges
inequality and involves them in setting the culture and ethos in places they
go. When some of us talk about equality; we talk about treating everyone the
same or the need to. For me, as a practitioner equality has always meant that I
have a duty to challenge inequality.
The training I received helped me view my role as someone
who is, for example, anti-racist – not simply ‘not racist’. I commit to
challenging racism and racist language. I will challenge homophobia or
practices that promote gender inequality and so on. This is what we can all do.
On my shift, in my classroom, I will challenge prejudice and value individuals.
The walls in our club or class, the activities we do, will clearly value
diversity and we will learn about difference and respect.
We won’t achieve this by starting off from a point where we
treat everyone the same – our goal is to achieve equity first and we need to address
the imbalance -
Creating environments such as these and role modelling
how to challenge prejudice and promote what makes people different, and to
learn to accept this, is exactly what we sign up for if we work with or even
have children.
Brian
