Saturday 29 October 2011

Equality, antistigma and notes

I'm puzzling how to communicate something which hasn't properly crystalised as a concept. I'm a pretty slow learner in this way but once I've got a concept sorted it becomes easier.

I'm thinking about stigma and discrimination and its link to inequality and disability. Stigma is perceptions and discrimination is action, at least in my simplistic reduction. They are most or all of the cause of disability and inequalities. Inequality and disability may be conceptually the same thing but they're definedly strongly linked.

Rectification of disability is a goal of the nhs and uk government. It feels like less of a priority than tackling inequality but they might be the same thing or so closely aligned that in practice there is no difference between inequality issues and social disability in most if not all cases. The impacts of inequality are seen but not labelled as the outcomes and exclusion of social disability. Social disability exists because of inequality.

Is any of this true? I don't know but I think so. Being poor comes with a poor prognosis, i.e. the label of poor can lead to worse outcomes in some measures, for example life expectancy. Equality reduces disability, e.g. lifts and ramps in all public buildings reduces mobility disability and exclusion.

This example of lifts and ramps is a discrimination issue. Stigma may not affect physically disabled groups in the same way as those with mental disability.

It's all rectifiable inequality though. And, as lifts and ramps enforced by legislation has proven, if there's a will there's a way.

Sent from my smartphone

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We It comes in part from an appreciation that no one can truly sign their own work. Everything is many influences coming together to the one moment where a work exists. The other is a begrudging acceptance that my work was never my own. There is another consciousness or non-corporeal entity that helps and harms me in everything I do. I am not I because of this force or entity. I am "we"