(C) Combatting Stereotypes
WORKSHOP 4
Title/ VISUALIZING LABELLING
Age Range or Target Group/ Youth workers and Social workers who are dealing with issues of stereotypical behaviour, as well as with various ramifications and expressions of racism towards the ‘other’. Suitable for being applied in groups of individuals who adopt racist behaviours towards individuals of another ethnicity, such as migrants and refugees.
Duration/ 1 hour
Key Words & Phrases/ labelling, attaching a label to an individual, discrimination, stereotypes, self-knowledge, visualizing labels, unconscious tactics and mechanisms of labelling, beliefs and faith.
General Aim-Objective/ Labeling can be understood as the act of attaching a label to an individual, or else putting someone in a category. In most instances, labeling can be negative and harmful for the individual, and promotes stereotypes and discrimination.
In Sociology, it was Howard Becker who introduced the labeling theory in relation to deviance. He believed that, in the day to day interactions with others, people develop labels for others. For example, a person can be labeled as a ‘criminal.’ Once such a label has been created for an individual, this becomes his master status. The individual is unable to go back to his normal lifestyle because of this label. This highlights that labeling can be negative for the individual who has been labeled. Usually we don’t understand when we start putting labels to the others. An interesting method is to try visualizing Labeling.
Instructions (Step-by-Step Process)/
Aim of this activity is to give the chance to trainees to have a vision about their labeling mechanism based on their culture, believes and faith.
Step 1: The trainer obtains the same number of adhesive labels (e.g., of the kind for file folders) as there are participants in his class, and writes a stereotypic attribute on each label. It’s preferable for the trainer to use for his labels some general phrases connected with specific behaviors and not directly persons. As example, “hate me”, “laugh at me”, “Adore me”, “being angry with me”, “ignore me”, “listen carefully to me”.
Step 2: The trainer attaches a label on each student’s forehead (or back), so that the label is not visible to the wearer. The trainer has to make clear from the very beginning that these labels are being assigned randomly and have nothing to do with trainees’ actual attributes.
Step 3: The trainer asks the participants to spend 15 minutes talking with each other about “future goals” (another general topic could also be chosen but this one works perfectly in eliciting responses to the labels). The trainer should inform participants that they should circulate in order to talk with several different people, and that they should treat one another according to the other person’s labeled attribute. For example, someone labeled “forgetful” might be repeatedly reminded of the instructions.
Step 4: Fifteen minutes later, the facilitator asks trainees to leave their labels on for a little while longer. If the group size and furniture allows, it would be rather better for the trainees to be sited in a circle.
Subsequently, trainees are asked by the educator to share how they felt during the exercise, how they were treated by others as well as how this treatment has affected them. At this stage of the workshop, trainees frequently mention their discomfort, not only with being stereotyped but with treating others stereotypically.
Material and Resources/ paper tape, marker or pen
Goldstein, S. B. (1997). The power of stereotypes: A labeling exercise. Teaching of Psychology, 24, 256-258.
Media and Techniques/ entertaining activity, role play, simulation exercise, guided discussion
Desirable Outcomes and Competences/ After the completion of the workshop, trainees will have recognized into their selves various personal tactics and mechanism of Labeling that they tend to activate -even unconsciously- during their daily routine.
Hence, the participants will have started gaining some missing components of their self- knowledge.
WORKSHOP 5
Title/ THE DANGER OF A SINGLE STORY
Age Range or Target Groups/ Youth workers and social workers who are dealing with issues of stereotypical behaviour, as well as with various ramifications and expressions of racism towards the ‘other’. Suitable for being applied in groups of individuals who adopt racist behaviours towards individuals of another ethnicity, such as migrants and refugees.
Duration/ 1 hour and 15 minutes with guided discussion and self-reflection
Key Words & Phrases / personal narrative, cultural voice, critical misunderstanding, cultural origins, self-identity, self-expectations, perception of the other, social perception and stereotypes, forms of power, reproduction of stories, vulnerability of a child in the face of a story, cultural symbols in literature, consequences of a single story, the power of communication.
General Aim-Objectives/ This video is an autobiographical story presented in TEDx. In this case, it serves as stimulation for further discussion and self-assessment. Particularly, the novelist Chimamanda Adichie, tells her story of how she found her authentic cultural voice, whilst in parallel warning that, if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
The video has been selected on purpose, in order to stimulate discussions about cultural origins, self-identity, self-expectations, as well as about ways in which social perceptions and stereotypes constructed, challenge self-esteem and identity as well. The element of power in stereotypes is also examined. The video is a great opportunity for further investigation of these issues through multiple touching stories, accompanied by an in-depth confession of the novelist. However, the discussion that will follow should be facilitated with sensitivity and guided around the topics presented.
Instructions (Step-by-Step Process)/
The trainer invites the trainees to watch the following video:
[Important Note: The content of the proposed video is extremely interesting, however it requires a high level on behalf of participants in terms of English language skills. Accordingly, it’s being suggested to use it only in case that the required level of English has been achieved by the group. Alternatively, it’s being suggested to the counsellor to facilitate by translation those who don’t have the linguistic capacity to understand some notions presented within the video].
-When the lecture viewing has been completed, the trainer asks the participants about their first feelings, impressions and general thoughts that might have emerged while watching the video.
Slightly after, the trainer prepares four flipchart papers with one thematic axis at the top of each flipchart. The three thematic axes are summarized as follows:
(i) The representations (symbols) of stereotypes about nations or individuals that the novelist describes throughout her lecture
(ii) ways in which the component of ‘power’ affects the representations of stories
(iii) consequences arising from merely focusing on a single story of a nation or individual
Subsequently, the trainer helps the trainees to elaborate on the thematic axis in each flipchart, whilst in parallel proceeding to a further discussion, where needed. The trainer is responsible to summarize and record each point that has been reported by the participants, by preferably using the method of ‘bullet points’.
In case that the trainees encounter difficulties to detect all the possible answers, the trainer provides assistance, mainly by posing ancillary questions. In any case, the trainer should have memorized from the beginning the content of the list of answers, thus being prepared enough to provide any kind of assistance.
The complete answers are indicatively being illustrated below:
FLIPCHART 1: representations (symbols) of stereotypes about nations or individuals
-England and America (stereotypically represented within books and stories); stereotypes in terms of weather, food and drinks (eating apples and drinking ginger beer) as well as in the way of talking and thinking (they frequently talk about the weather);
-social perception for poor people (they are unable to create, or to construct something- the novelist couldn’t believe that the poor little boy was the person who created on his own the basket made of dyed raffia. Apparently, it was impossible for the writer to see those poor people as ‘anything else but poor’ [single story];
-the American roommate of Adichie was shocked by her: ‘she asked where I learnt to speak English so well’; she used to listen to ‘tribal music’. The single story of roommate about Africa: a single story of catastrophe;
-announcement in the airplane about ‘India, Africa and other countries’;
-popular images about Africa: a place of beautiful landscapes and beautiful animals, incomprehensible people – fighting senseless wars and dying from poverty and AIDS-, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner [single story];
-Adichie’s professor who argued that her novel was lacking of ‘African authenticity’;
-Mexicans who -for Americans- had been considered as people who were fleecing the healthcare system, or being arrested at the border, etc. Accordingly, immigration became synonymous with Mexicans. Adichie had been affected by the American media coverage about Mexicans, so that they became one thing in her mind; the ‘abject immigrant’.
-Adichie’s student who claimed that all the Nigerian men are physical abusers, like the male protagonist of her novel;
-Writers were expected to have had really unhappy childhoods in order to be successful;
-Africans were not expected to be readers or writers.
FLIPCHART 2: ways in which the component of ‘power’ affects the representations of stories
-Power is the ability not to just tell the story of one person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.
-Because of America’s cultural and economic power we get many stories of America, therefore not being leaded to a creation of a generic perception about the American. On the other hand, the story of Nigeria is not promoted in the same way, mainly due to the lack of political and economic power of that particular country.
FLIPCHART 3: consequences arising from merely focusing on a single story of a nation or individual
-A single story flattens the personal experience and overlooks all the other ramifications that form a person or a nation.
-The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but they are incomplete. They make the one story to become the only story.
-It is impossible to comprehend one place or person, without engaging with all of the stories of that place or that person.
-The single story robs people of dignity, it makes our recognition for equal humanity difficult, it emphasizes on how we are different rather than on how we are similar.
As a conclusion, the trainees are invited to watch the following video, namely ‘Scent of Geranium’ created by Naghmeh Farzaneh, whose immigration story comes to life in a beautiful watercolor animation (duration: 5 mins).
Materials and Resources/ laptop, projector, flipcharts, markers, pens.
Media and Techniques/ u-tube video-TEDx talk, personal narrative, guided discussions, elaboration of a topic by using ‘bullet points’.
Desirable Outcomes and Competences/ After the completion of the workshop, trainees would have investigated the following thematic axes:
(i) Forms of power in forming stereotypes
(ii) Ways in which stereotypical behavior forms -or even challenges- individual identity and social perception
(iii) Where do I come from defines who will I be?
WORKSHOP 6
Title/ THE SOCIAL MEDIA BULL
Age Range or Target Group/ mixed group
Duration/ 2 hours
Key Words & Phrases/ Communication, Peer Education, Social Inclusion. ‘Bulling and Social Networks’ constitutes a role-play that simulates the operation of one of the most popular social networks, Facebook, trying to bring out some dynamics of violence developing on social networks.
General Aim- Objectives / ‘Bulling and Social Networks’ is an active, participated and creative instrument that shows the nature of social networks. The workshop makes you reflect on how everything that we publish on the social community is absorbed by the virtual world, becoming available to people who can use it as they want. Cyber-bullies, instigators, fakers can easily access to our profiles, comment photos or posts or videos that may harm our image and our credibility in the real world. “Like”, innocent comments and sharing accelerate and enhance the cyber-bullies’ activity, making the online spread of pictures, words or videos uncontrollable. On the web, then, violence increases easily.
Instructions (Step by Step process)/
Participants are divided into four groups. Each group is given a flipchart, markers, old magazines and newspapers from which they can crop images, articles or words.
With the material made available, each team should first build a fake profile of a fictional person and its own page, with name and surname (real or fake), photos, comments, articles representative of themselves or their mood.
Once this first phase is done, the members of all the groups, in silence, and with the help of post-it, comment on the pages of the other groups, engaging communicative dynamics. During this second phase, some of the participants, to whom had been previously and secretly assigned a specific role (by the trainers) will go around the profiles to post and comment depending on the task they have been previously assigned. For example, the facilitator could urge those participants to make some racist or sexist comments in terms of appearance, colour, believes, lifestyle etc. But this depends on the profiles that participants will create each time that the specific workshop will be materialized.
It is important for the trainers to carefully choose the subjects to assign the specific roles which we have mentioned above; the roles can be assigned for affinity or opposition between the role and the personality of the person who will interpret it, depending on the dynamics that you are interested in developing in the group.
The debriefing focuses on an initial analysis of participants’ pages. In order to facilitate this time of sharing and reflection, the conductor can ask participants if something particular happens during the activity and if something on their Facebook page makes them feel uncomfortable or embarrassed. All are invited to express their thoughts and read comments posted on their pages, but no one is forced to do it.
The conductor must take care to point out that people’s behaviour may result from a role attributed to some mates, who will be then invited to describe their action and the comments left. Then follows a discussion on the experience that each one may have lived in reality, on any cases of cyber-bullying which they attended and the role they have played in that situation (as actors or spectators): “have you ever witnessed this type of situations?”; “have you ever played the role assigned to you?”; “do you recognize yourself in some other role here described?”; “how did you behave?”; “were you satisfied with the behaviour that you was keeping in that situation?” etc ..).
Materials and Resources/ A4 sheets, markers, magazines, scissors, glue, sticky notes
Media and Techniques/ creative activities, simulation of social media contexts, guided discussions
Desirable Outcomes and Competences/ Thanks to the dynamism of the activity and the opportunity to give space to the imagination, youths have the chance to think together about the dynamics that are being developed online and compare on the opinions they have (sometimes even contrasting), by gaining the opportunity to experience the psychology of the digital victims. On the contrary of what we had thought at the beginning, youths get to know the security measures given by Facebook and other social networks.
- Participants will emphasize on how stereotypical behaviour towards disadvantaged groups such as migrants and refugees is being cultivated through social networks supported by the net.
- Participants will realize the connection and the action-reaction process between virtual and real world, always in correlation with the topic.
- Participants will deepen their knowledge on the notions of cyber-bulling, digital victims and their psychology, and the in-direct violence applied by social networks and the net.
- Participants will be aware of the security measures given by Facebook and other social networks.
Debriefing- Questions for Evaluation/ The trainer could use the following questions for the ‘Debriefing’ section:
- “Have you ever witnessed this type of situations?”
- “Have you ever played the role assigned to you?”
- “Do you recognize yourself in some other role here described?”
- “How did you behave?”;
- “Were you satisfied with the behaviour that you was keeping in that situation?”