Intersectionality is Important.

 Hi, howdie, hello!

It’s Black History Month here in the UK. Did you know?

Every month should be black history month. Black history is world history. Nuff said. (And here’s a piece I wrote this month for TLG.)

Hopefully you have spent some time this month learning more about some of the heroes and heroines who have been whitewashed out of our volumes. I have!

That’s not what this blog post is about, though there is a link. I’m here to talk about intersectionality.

Intersectionality

Kimberlé Crenshaw 

The term ‘intersectionality’ was coined by civil rights activist Kimberlé Crenshaw in the 1980s. Simply put, it refers to:

The interconnected nature of social categorisations such as race, class, and gender, which combine cumulatively to create overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination.

Even words like ‘socio-economic’ acknowledge that any given discriminative structure rarely exists in a silo. 

Gender

Sexism is one of the oldest systemic forms of oppression. It is embodied in numerous discriminatory practices. Beyond examples of gender-based violence: including sexual assault, rape and domestic abuse; which are perhaps the first that flooded your mind, the economic disparity between men and women shows more evidence of the trail sexism leaves in its wake.

The gender pay gap continues to be a thing. Journalist Samira Ahmed’s win against the BBC earlier this year highlighted that even when doing the same work as men, women are often paid less.

Enter Covid-19.

The coronavirus epidemic has deepened the disadvantage that millions of people across the globe were already living with.

Many women were already in financial precarity before Covid. Women are disproportionately more likely to work in jobs where contract hours are long, but pay is low – such as in hospitality, retail and care. When the full UK lockdown came into force, restaurants and non-essential shops were forced to close. The ramifications quickly became clear; a UK study released in May found that by that point in the lockdown, of those who had lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic, 78% were women. 

In addition to being more likely to be left jobless, women are also more likely to have their hours cut or to be placed on furlough. (This, paradoxically, exists alongside the reality that women are actually more likely to be key workers than men – working in supermarkets and as nurses, to give some typical examples.) And that’s just Covid-specific stuff. Outside of the pandemic, the unfair dismissal of pregnant women is still not a thing of the past.

Class & Poverty

It’s already clear to see that gender and economic status intersect. Being a woman, in itself, makes you more likely to earn less. So then, what about if you start your life already at an economic disadvantage – gender aside?

Studies conducted in 2019 showed that over 4 million children in the UK live in poverty – and contrary to common belief, the majority of these children live with working parents. Covid will have changed those figures for the worse, of course. (Not that the government cared enough to extend free meals to those will go hungry in the holidays without help.)

Mancunian footballer Marcus Rashford has drawn national attention to the issue of free school meals

Children growing up in poverty face a number of obstacles. Going hungry is nothing trivial and is terrible enough. In a home where parents struggle to find enough money to pay for food, there is often little cash spare to pay for gas and electric bills, to keep the family warm. Having to choose between having food on the table and having a home is a very real dilemma for some people in this country.

In homes where children are going hungry, it goes without saying that many of the privileges most of us take for granted, are out of reach. Fresh clothes. Money for stationery. Internet access.

How well can you really concentrate when your stomach is empty?

Is it any wonder that schools in deprived areas perform less well than institutions in affluent neighbourhoods?

The A-Level fiasco we saw in the UK this year demonstrated clearly that even though working-class people are already worse off, the system is bent on reinforcing their disenfranchisement. If you went to a state school in a disadvantaged district, managed to work hard and get high predicted grades despite this…  And all the same, found that the exam regulator had discarded all your teachers’ predictions – concluding instead, that as you went to such-and-such school, it was legitimate to award you results three grades lower than what you had been consistently achieving… How would you feel when you learnt that people who went to the independent school on the other side of town had received no such treatment?

The academic system routinely fails those of poorer backgrounds. Aside from financial capital, those in poverty often lack the cultural capital to successfully navigate processes such as university applications and university itself. And that’s “just” poverty.

What about when you’re poor and female?

There are these things called periods – you may have heard of them – which affect more than 50% of the population every month. I don’t know a woman who loves that time of the month, but I can think of girls and women for whom it is more than an annoyance.

There are girls and women in this country who live in such poverty that they can’t afford sanitary products. Yes, in this country. 

The pandemic has only exacerbated the issue. The charity Bloody Good Period typically distributes around 5,000 sanitary products to women and girls in Britain – in the first three months of the lockdown, that figure mounted to 23,000.

It is estimated that about 137,000 girls in the UK will miss school each year due to a lack of access to sanitary products.

Scarcity of money means that without help, girls and women who experience period poverty frequently resort to using toilet roll, pillowcases, or even newspaper to try and contain their menstrual flow.

The BBC estimates that in her lifetime, the average woman in the UK will spend about £1,600 each year on period. When you are a woman and poor, this is no joke. The intersectionality of double disadvantage cannot be dismissed.

Race

Last week, the newly-appointed Covid-19 and ethnicities advisor to the UK government declared that ‘structural racism is not a reasonable explanation’ for why a disproportionate number of BAME - Black, Asian and minority ethnic (I hate that term, but I’ve got to use it here) - people are dying of Covid. I say: intersectionality, my friend, intersectionality...

Structural racism, in its very terminology, acknowledges that racism does not exist in a silo. It is embedded not just into individual psyches, but institutional structures; into systems. 

It’s almost comical that a few days after this advisor’s words, Labour peer Baroness Lawrence published a damning report which elucidates the impact of Covid-19 on BAME people.

This conversation is about more than just, say, whether a patient receives adequate care from health workers when they are seriously ill. Intersectionality requires us to look at whole structures rather than single strands. In so doing, when we step back, we quickly see that systemic racism is cemented into the groundwork of each of the structures before us. 

BAME people are more than twice as likely to live in poverty than their white counterparts. They are subsequently more likely to live in overcrowded housing. And we know that Covid-19 is a dynamic virus which spreads easily in small spaces. Socio-economic factors mean that people of colour are also more likely to live in multi-generational households, which of course puts elderly members of the family at greater risk. These structural inequalities all factor into the overrepresentation of people of colour in Covid fatalities. This is a pattern that has played out in the US, too.

Reports have revealed that black people in the healthcare sector are more likely to be sent on the frontline of Covid treatment than their white counterparts, despite being at greater risk. 

It is silly to disregard the influence of race when it comes to any inequality.   

Black women are five times more likely than white women to die of maternal mortality.  – UK study.

There are a lot of feminists out there who pretend that every woman has the same experience of sexism. That just isn’t the case – and that’s why many women of colour now distance themselves from ‘feminism’; branding it ‘white feminism’. 

Anyone that declares that they are for the emancipation of women, has to be for the emancipation of all women. Anyone that calls themselves a feminist but is not simultaneously anti-racist, is not a feminist – they are only for some women’s rights.

Black women are often found at the bottom of the social ladder. Just think of Breonna Taylor. Apartment walls were deemed to matter more than her life. What that tells us about the value U.S. society ascribes to black women is frightening.

Sexual objectification is a prevalent problem which affects all women – but it reaches another degree when it comes to black women. Just look at how Serena Williams is treated. She’s described in papers as “aggressive”, animalistic features are attributed to her, and there’s an incessant focus on her curvy figure. Serena yells when she hits a tennis ball, granted, but when Sharapova and Arazenka screamed, I never heard anyone calling them gorillas. The centuries-old trope of black women as sexual beasts – sexy, but not pretty – can be directly traced back to human zoos which placed women like Sara Baartman in their display cabinets.

Serena Williams and her daughter Olympia earlier this year

I may not ever have been forced to participate in a “freak show” (thankfully), but I’ve most definitely been impacted by the hyper-sexualisation of black women. Most notably, in Italy, where men just presumed that they could ask me for sex. 

And we haven’t even talked about the stereotype of the “angry black woman”…

Disability

Imagine what happens when you are black, female, poor and have a disability. 

Or wait – let me just tell you how severe disadvantage gets if you are a black boy of Caribbean heritage in a low-income household, and have special educational needs (SEN). 

You are 168 times more likely to be excluded from school by the time you are 16 than a white British girl without special educational needs, who is from an affluent household.

In this case, yes, it is males that are more on the back foot. There’s good (bad) reason for that. Black boys in particular are often unfairly earmarked as troublemakers and academically incompetent, due to long-existing stereotypes.

To put the above statistic into perspective… 

Economically disadvantaged pupils who are on free school meals (FSM) are four times more likely to be excluded than those not on FSM. Black Caribbean pupils are three times more likely on the whole than white British pupils to be excluded. Pupils with SEN (disregarding the other disadvantages) are eight times more likely to be excluded than their peers without. 

And that’s just at the start of a child’s life. Think of how these adversities multiply as these children grow older…

.. And we haven’t even talked about physical disability…

Final thoughts

As you’ve read this far, I’d like to think that you, too, care about dismantling structural inequality. I hope I’ve helped you see, with just a few examples, that we cannot ignore intersectionality. Are you with me? Then let’s start changing these conversations – discouraging discussions which place any given inequality in a silo. If we don't holistically tackle injustice, we'll never truly tackle any of it.

Intersectionality is important.

On Being 'Differently Abled'...

I started writing this blog post way back in July, whilst sitting on a bed in Spain at 6am. I’ve only recently managed to finish it. Why was I writing at 6am, you ask? Because I couldn’t sleep. Why couldn’t I sleep?

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What is a ‘disability’ though, really?

                It’s only lately that I’ve felt strong enough to come out and openly talk about something that changed my life nearly four years ago – though it has actually had an impact on my life for longer – more on that later.

                In February 2014 I was diagnosed with a chronic muscular pain condition called fibromyalgia. It took a long time for the specialists to finally ascertain what I had, but the reality is that I’d had symptoms of this condition for many years.

                I’m not writing this post for sympathy. I would rather people didn’t know I had fibro to be honest, but I’ve realised that there are too many of us suffering in silence whilst pretending to be like everyone else or pretending that being ‘differently abled’ isn’t really as hard as it actually is… So I’m writing this for the other people out there that are ‘differently abled’. And maybe for others too, to understand what this is like.

                Why am I saying “differently abled”? Because that’s what I am. Even before I was diagnosed with fibro I hated that word, ‘disabled’. Dis-abled. UNable to do things. It suggests that people with conditions that limit them physically or mentally are incapable and incompetent. I beg to differ, and I have always begged to differ. 

“DIFFERENTLY” ABLED… NOT DIS-ABLED!

                I feel the Paralympics and other para-sport events remind the world every now and again what people that suffer from physical or intellectual impairments are truly capable of if they are allowed to shine. I speak as someone that has loved, followed and trained in athletics for several years: I have more respect for so-called “disabled” athletes than I do for able-bodied stars, though I do love my Usain Bolts, Mo Farahs and Jess Ennis-Hills. The determination and steadfastness that is required to compete in a sport like athletics is crazy. It gets even crazier when you want to be the very best and stay at the top. And then it becomes crazier still if you want to do the two former in addition to having a seriously debilitating condition which makes things x times more difficult.

                It’s crazy hard, but it’s possible. It’s just possible in a different way to what it is if your body and your brain work as they’re supposed to. If you have some type of handicap, you are not DISabled from being eligible, you are simply DIFFERENTLY equipped for the task. Equipped with less, sure, but still equipped nevertheless. You just have to do things in a different way.

                Personally I prefer the word that people used to use to describe people with ‘disabilities’: ‘handicapped’. It denoted that such individuals were limited in their abilities to do certain things, but did not rule out the possibility of them doing these activities.

                I’ve long been an advocate of people with ‘disabilities’. Side note: I do hate using that word, but until another word becomes available in the English dictionary I guess I’ll just have to use it! Based on that conclusion, I’ll stop putting it inverted commas from here on out – but that doesn’t mean I agree with the term! Siding with people that fall into that bracket just seems like the perfectly obvious thing to do as a human being! I believe people only become discriminatory towards people with disabilities when they begin to see them as less than people – and there’s no doubt in my mind that the language used to describe them plays a part in giving shape to this reprehensible mindset that some people seem to have.

                As a linguist it’s no surprise that I see the language we use as very significant in shaping our thought process, but really if you think about it, it does make sense. Think back to the days of outright and very nasty racism (I’d like to think things have improved, but we all know racism is alive and well – even if it is generally not as in-your-face as it used to be…) when people would regularly refer to black people as “monkeys” and “baboons”. Of course it helped justify racists’ treatment of them: if these human beings were represented in people’s minds as mere animals with no intellectual capacity, it became easier to rationalise treating them with no dignity – though, let’s be honest, in a lot of countries black people were treated A LOT worse than dogs. The same goes for this: ableist people (that’s the word we use to describe people who are discriminatory towards “disabled” people) often use: ‘You can’t do anything, you’d be better off dead’ as their rationale for scorning people with disabilities and denying them time and time again their basic human rights.

                You don’t need to look very far to see how badly disabled people are generally treated in daily life. Watch a documentary on someone with a life-threatening or life-changing condition which makes them visibly different to others and you don’t have to wait long before the sufferer talks about how they are often stared at, pointed at and maybe even spat at in public. You can read stories of how people have been denied access to toilets and so many other services simply on the basis that they look different. You see how people will assume they can’t do a lot of things without even asking them first.

 My Case

                That isn’t me.

                Fibromyalgia, the condition I have, isn’t a visible condition. You wouldn’t know I had it unless I told you. In fact, until not so long ago only a handful of my friends knew I had it. There are benefits and downsides to having a condition which is invisible. The benefit is I can generally pass as “being like everyone else”, and the downside is “I appear to be like everyone else”. Do you see, it’s a double-edged sword. People not knowing about my condition means I don’t have to face frequent and outright discrimination in public, which I no doubt would if I were in a wheelchair. It also means that when I go to an interview, no-one will assume that I’ll be unable to carry out my work and decline to give me a job as a result – because they simply won’t guess that there’s anything wrong with me.

                But it does mean that when the metro is full I have to stand, like everyone else, until a seat becomes available, because no-one will know that my feet hurt from standing. It also means that no-one will give up their seat for me in the way they would move to make space for someone in a wheelchair (as most decent people would).  I remember once when we were on the bus in Marseille and some old people came in. My family and I all had seats, but a couple of these men said that my brothers should get up because they were young and could stand. From looking at me, you might quite reasonably assume that I am young, fit and healthy and so should quite rightly stand and give my seat to someone older if the occasion arose. On this occasion my brothers got up and we found some seats elsewhere, at the back of the bus, but I do remember thinking on that day, what if that had been me? What if one day an OAP asks me to get up, or expects me to get up so they can sit down? I always move when I can, to sit elsewhere, because I respect the older generation and I like to make things easier for people whenever possible. But if there are no seats free and I know I will have to stand on my feet for another 20 minutes if I give my seat to this hypothetical individual (because this is all hypothetically speaking), would I be able to do that?

                OK, let me explain a little about fibromyalgia is and what it does to you.

                I’ve been having symptoms of fibro since I was nine in fact, but I only got diagnosed with it when I was eighteen. The symptoms I experienced for nine years were sharp, “shock” pains. They would run through my body at entirely unexpected times and they were – and ARE – excruciating. They were mostly intermittent, meaning I would get maybe one here and then another there over the course of a day – but sometimes I might have a series of them for up to half an hour, running through either one block of my body or just all over. They were – and ARE – horrible, and though I went to the GP on a few occasions as a child to get them checked out, the doctors simply didn’t understand what was going on. Eventually I just came to accept that I was going to have to live with this strange and bizarre pain that would shoot through my body and make me twitch and sometimes scream and wince in pain. They were the worst at school: you can’t just scream aloud in class, can you? And nobody could see what I could feel, so I would try and hide it. Sometimes people noticed, like when my leg suddenly moved as if from a spasm when I was sitting down. But most of the time I could cover it. I would just close my eyes extremely tightly together and pray for the pain to go away because I knew I couldn’t scream. People would think I was crazy.

                It was only at home that “my secret was known”, if you like. If I screamed I could explain it away the moment after by saying “I just had a shock”.

                We tried everything, trying to change my diet so that I would have more Vitamin D, taking supplements, drinking more water, nothing helped. The shocks have been part of my life for over a decade. I remember one thing that frustrated me was how everyone seemed to think they had the answer without having a clue. I recall one girl at school telling me with certainty that the pains I was experiencing were period pains, no matter how much I told her the contrary.

                That’s another thing: people that suffer from fibromyalgia frequently have horrible period pains. I know I do. It makes sense that sufferers of fibro tend to have really bad period pains, really. Fibro is a muscular condition that affects every muscle in the body, and sufferers often fall victim to other related medical conditions. It was a couple of months into starting my degree at Oxford that I started to experience its full-blown effects. (As a side note: I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the intensifying of my symptoms occurred a matter of weeks into me starting at Oxford. You can read my series “Reflections on Oxford” series here.)

Living with Fibromyalgia

                It seems fibromyalgia is most common with women between ages 20-30, but it does affect men and those in other age groups too. Singer Lady Gaga and actor Morgan Freeman have both publicly come out and talked about living with the condition. I have, since I was diagnosed, met quite a few people who suffer from it.

                Fibromyalgia is a muscular disorder that leaves you in constant pain. Yes, I do mean that. I’ve spoken to quite a few friends who can’t understand how I can be in constant pain and still function. The pain is everywhere, but especially in my forearms, lower legs, and hands. On bad days (days when I have a flare-up and the symptoms become inflamed), the pain gets probably about five times worse than usual. This means my head is in awful pain, my back (gosh, everywhere!)… On those days I can barely walk or even stand. And if I manage to do either you can tell there’s something up with me.

                The intense, throbbing pain is especially worse when I’m in contact with anything. Which is, all the time, of course, as I can’t just hold myself in the air! So sitting down, standing up, lying down, kneeling… They’re all painful.

                Fatigue is also a major symptom of fibromyalgia. That means I’m tired all the time. If I don’t get enough sleep, I’m likely to have a flare-up the next day, which will affect my ability to achieve what I want to in a given day. Funny thing though, is, although I’m always tired, sleep disturbance is another major thing you have to deal with when you have fibromyalgia! So often I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t sleep, even though I’m SUPER tired!! It’s very annoying.

                Some people use medication to cope with fibromyalgia. I don’t, because nothing has ever worked for me.  The strong medication I’ve been prescribed has either had no effect, or has made me feel super sleepy! (Not helpful!)

                Not much is known about fibromyalgia. Even though I was treated (given a personal physiotherapist and more) at one of the best orthopaedic clinics in the country, the best explanation I could get for why my body behaves this way is that I process pain in a different way, and in some people the pain receptors in the brain are more sensitive than in others. Thanks. (If any of my medic friends wants to do a thesis looking into possible causes of and remedies for fibromyalgia, be my guest!)

                I’ve become a lot better about telling people about my pain and being real about my limitations. When I first got diagnosed, I hated the lack of control I had and found it really hard to accept the limitations that this label and condition confined me too. Now I’ve realised that actually, not accepting this only makes things worse. It pushes my body into overdrive, and it’s not fair to not inform people that I work with that there are certain things that I just can’t do.

                Here are some examples of things that I find annoying and frankly, embarrassing – that fibromyalgia has done to change me and what I can do. Something as simple as opening a jar or a bottle is actually extremely painful. The pain is really bad in my hands, so whenever I have to clench my hands, I’m putting myself into extreme pain. (Or as the case may be, sometimes other people unintentionally put me into a lot of pain. A very firm handshake, for example, leaves my hand burning for the next two minutes.) That doesn’t mean I never open a bottle or clench my fist around a doorknob, but it does make those things harder. Sometimes I do ask someone else to do something like a new jar for me, because it’s just too painful. Especially on a day I’m having a flare-up. I love how people don’t berate me for asking their help with those things, but simply help with no qualms.

                Even until very recently, I didn’t tell members of my own family about the gravity of the condition I have, because I didn’t want to admit to how weak that could sometimes make me. I’m starting to be more honest about the fibromyalgia, and I think the transparency is only helping me.

                That said, I don’t tell everyone I meet that I have fibro. I like to be “like everyone else” sometimes, you know? I don’t feel everyone I spend a little time with needs to know what I have. The lifestyle that I currently lead is making that a bit difficult though: I’m touring Europe with a Christian drama company and we’re constantly on the move. As much as I’m enjoying it, packing up so often and spending extended periods of time with people can be quite tiring, and though I just usually say “I’m feeling tired” by way of an excuse to get some rest, that doesn’t quite sum up what it feels like for your whole head to be pounding and your legs to be screaming out and your body saying “Sleep! I need sleep!”

ABLE

                I wanted to write this post to make others that suffer in silence or feel inadequate because they have some sort of physical limitation, feel that they are not alone, and be reminded of their worth.  Also, I guess I wanted people to become more aware of fibromyalgia and to start to question our discourse on disability.

                Some people would call fibromyalgia a disability. I guess technically it could be defined as such, but I don’t like to put myself in that box, because as I’ve already said, I don’t like the word “disabled”. I also don’t think I can use language that sees me as having as many limitations as someone that is paralysed and in a wheelchair etc… I definitely have limitations and I guess the condition I have does influence my quality of life, but there are still lots of things that I am able to do that someone in a wheelchair cannot.

                That said, someone in a wheelchair can still have great quality of life – ask them! Life is what you make it, and I have decided that I’m not going to let fibromyalgia define me. I do like to show it who’s boss as often as I possibly can.

                I finished a degree, am now touring across Europe with a Christian drama company, have lived in four different countries, still pursue all my interests… Including athletics! Experts actually do recommend that those living with fibromyalgia do regular exercise to relieve muscle tension. It’s a double-edged sword though, because sometimes my body is too tired and I’m in too much pain to do exercise! Of course everything hurts, but if I simply thought to myself, “I’m in pain, I can’t do anything”, I WOULD LITERALLY NEVER DO ANYTHING. Welcome to being in pain all the time.

                However, over-exertion and stress do make fibromyalgia worse, so I have learnt to “pace” myself. That means when I know I need to stop, I have to be honest with myself and everyone around me and STOP.

                As a Christian I do believe in healing, but there’s no doubt that fibromyalgia has been a tough pill for me to swallow, and there are times when I’ve lost my ability to have faith that this condition will ever be a thing of the past. God is well capable of healing me, but He may choose not to. In the meantime, I am using every ounce of my being to serve Him and encourage others in a similar position to me that they can do it, too!

                I don’t really have anything more to say, apart from that I need people to know that no-one is DIS-abled. No-one is UNable to do anything. We are humans, we are all able to think and feel… Even someone that is paralysed has that ability. Nobody has the right to undermine anyone else’s quality of life or their worth. I feel an especial connection to the discourse on the “disabled” because I know that some people could look at me, as someone that lives in constant pain, and view my life as a not very fun one – yet I think I show them to be wrong! I’m pretty much always laughing, singing, and living life to the full! Despite the limitations that my body has placed on me.

                Actually wait, I do have something else to say – any “Christians” that go around telling people that have some sort of physical ailment because of some sin they have committed, PLEASE STOP. That is one of the worst things you can tell someone. We live in a broken world, and yes, sickness is a product of that, but to go around telling sick people that it is their fault they suffer in this way is not loving (and most likely not true!).

                To all of my readers who may be battling a debilitating physical condition, whatever it may be – visible or invisible – and/or the depression that is prone to come with it, know that YOU ARE LOVED, and you have so much to offer to society. You are strong, you are valued, and you are capable.

If you don’t suffer from a physical condition, good for you (I'm happy for you). Don’t forget how privileged you are in this regard. You have no idea how much I would give after four years of permanent pain (and lots before that) to just have two minutes of no pain. But even if I don’t get that, I will happily use my todays to give others hope for tomorrow. Don’t underestimate the power that you have to love people that society undervalues and remind them of their value and worth.

" You Are Loved".

All my love,

Ruth xxx

Social justice ~ Socialist.

The most famous and widely-read book in the world has amongst its many wisdom-filled lines: ‘The love of money is the root of all evil’. Some would say that the Bible is outdated and doesn’t fit our modern-day society but I would say that it is still relevant, thousands of years after its writers first penned the words that fill its pages. For even that one assertion has plenty of evidence to prove it valid: yes, still in the 21^st century.

I never used to be interested in politics. I saw it as boring and the concern of middle-aged men. But one sentence I heard uttered some time ago by a guest speaker on a radio programme changed my position. She said: “Women often say they’re not interested in politics. But the fact is, they want change. And that’s what politics is all about; it’s about seeking to change things for the better.” Her words struck me. They made me realise that I have actually been political since I was in primary school. I have always spoken my mind on matters that I believe to be indicators of societal problems and I have always sought to do what I can to change things. You already know that: you’re reading a blog post on The Change Channel.

As a child for whom the extent of political knowledge was the Prime Minister’s name, I remember once asking my mum what the job of the Conservatives was. Voting Labour is the the generally accepted thing to do around where I live, so I didn’t know much about ‘the other side’. She told me in simple terms: “the Conservatives are all about conserving things, keeping things the way they are.” She added half-in-jest: “They just want to keep all the money to themselves.”

It may have been a very simplistic explanation but even now I still think it’s an accurate description of the Conservative party. That is, the principal right-wing party in the UK. Now I’m not about to launch into eulogising Ed Milliband or begin a discussion on the rubberiness of his voice. Instead I’m going to tell you why I think a socialist approach goes hand in hand with social justice.

What is social justice?

Social justice is generally agreed to be ‘justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society’. Thomas Jefferson’s world-famous lines assert “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” So if we were all born equal, what happened in between?

It’s self-evident that there are multiple inequalities in the world in which we live today. They can be found between men and women, the rich and the poor, whites and non-whites, the sheltered and the neglected, the able-bodied and the disabled . . . Social justice aspires to rid the world of these wrongs with the aim of bringing about a better, fairer world.  

And the place to start is acknowledging that some groups in society are dealt a better hand than others from the start. So we may all have been “created equal”, but the minute we enter a very unequal world, we are either ushered up to the top of the pile or shoved to the bottom, according to who society deems laudable or undeserving. The words of Rousseau come to mind: ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains’.

Capitalism

As I’ve grown older I’ve come to realise just how much the way our society is run is dependent on who’s got the largest amount of money (or who’s got hardly any of it). The fact is, money is power. So if you “ain’t” got much of it, you “ain’t” got much power. Capitalism as a system is characterised by the private ownership of the means of production (the raw materials and the labour force), and inevitably results in the unequal distribution of wealth. As its name suggests, it centres on capital (wealth), unlike its counterpart ideology: socialism, which radically places society at its focus, pushing for a society in which wealth is evenly distributed and is owned by a collective community, usually through the state. I studied Marxism as part of my Sociology course at Advanced Level and although the principles its founders propounded seemed interesting to me at the time, I never really fully realised the import of their ideological approaches until I came to uni. It was here that I saw Max Weber’s theories acted out in real life.

In simplistic terms, the model which Marxists created saw society as divided along class lines, the working class (the proletariat) and the upper classes (the bourgeoisie); staying in tune with a system intended to keep the labour workforce in their place – working hard for the richer people. Provided the proletariat stayed in their place, other institutions, like the media and education could flourish effectively. Flourish effectively for one group of people that is. Yep, you guessed it: for the rich dudes (the bourgeoisie folk). Very simplistic illustration but that’s basically how capitalism works – there are people on top who push others beneath them and make them do all the work so that they the rich people at the top – can have a good life: whilst the people breaking their backs get very little or nothing in return.

Doesn’t sound very fair to me! How about you? Not really the right conditions for social justice, I would say: makes for unequal  distribution of wealth, opportunities and privileges in a society. Want me to give you a few examples?

Women

OK so let’s look at the position of women in society. I’m sure you’ll agree that even in the 21^st century a massive amount of inequality exists between men and women. Women make up 51% of the global population but worldwide figures show us that women are less likely than men to get an education, be employed or be elected to parliament – all the while they are more likely to be victims of domestic abuse, sexual assault, rape; more likely to be victims of sex trafficking; forced to be child brides – and worse still, some will deny females their right to live before they are even born, based on the lie that they have nothing good to offer the world.

Pretty horrible state of affairs.

You might be wondering what all this has to do with ‘the love of money’ that I referred to earlier, and the Marxist model and all of that. Allow me to explain my thought process: men have been the ones in positions of ultimate power for the past several centuries. In this modern age, women face fewer obstacles (although still many) to their endeavours than they once did, and so positions of power are no longer solely occupied by men.

It follows that some men feel threatened by the emergence of women in an arena in which they once found themselves alone. They resent that women will now have more of a say in their own lives, rather than having matters decided for them by those who want to “keep them in their place”. As things currently stand, in many cases women are still not paid the same amount of money as their male counterparts for the same work and they find themselves up against a ‘glass ceiling’ which prevents them from getting promoted in their fields because those positions are reserved for men.

How can we explain this if it not with capitalism? The more women get promoted, the fewer men get more cash in their pockets. Capitalism has a system to uphold and anything that shows any signs of messing with that status quo is soon stopped in its tracks. Think Jimmy Savile, that fishy so-called philanthropist who in actual fact used his powerful position to abuse thousands of young girls. Looking back on his life and the plethora of complaints made against Savile in his lifetime, it seems mind-boggling that something was not done earlier to change things.

But once I thought on things more deeply, I could see that it suited the interests of capitalism to leave a powerful man like Savile alone. The guy had been honoured by the Queen and was one of the most famous presenters on the TV: if he were to be charged, that would mean the end of high ratings for the BBC for Top of the Pops. If they got a man with that much power into trouble they would surely lose out on the power stakes themselves. People often have difficulty understanding why survivors of rape do not immediately report the crime: but in Savile’s case should it be so hard to believe? A rich white man loved by the British public against young teenage girls – who would be believed?

To my mind there is a clear link here between ‘the love of money’ and the evils sustained against women. Capitalism stacks the odds against those whose oppression it benefits from.

I’m not saying that capitalism is to blame for all the inequalities that women face today. However it is responsible for giving men more opportunities than women and it does grant the powerful safety nets which protect their interests, and this governs who ends up where. In spite of all this however, women continue to work hard and are still achieving great things. Despite being told they couldn’t do it, they are making their mark on science, sport, literature and many other fields. The thing is, it’s just so much harder for them to get there than it is for men. And that’s not fair.

Class

Capitalism presumes that the path to success is easy – because the path to success for those at the top of the capitalist ladder is easy. David Cameron (leader of the Conservative party) comes from a family which to this day is still benefiting from the ‘compensation’ they gained when they lost their slaves after the abolition. This sum, which equates to millions in today’s money, didn’t do Cameron any harm when he attended some of the highest fee-paying schools in the country.

The Conservatives, in their practice of capitalism, would tell us, ‘Work hard and you’ll get to where you want to in life.’ That’s their answer to everything. Work hard, that’s all well and good – but what if you have the attitude of a high-flyer yet are constantly having the opportunities which are your due right snatched away from you? That’s what happens if you’re a member of the lower classes – we see it everywhere.

Here at Oxford, where I’m studying, the evidence of classism is plain to see. It is with good reason that the university has a reputation of being a place for the cultural elite. Within the infrastructure and the intake of the students each year the upper classes most definitely come out on top. Studies in the past have shown that applicants from private schools were 14% more likely to be offered a place at Oxford than those with the same grades who went to a comprehensive school.  Although only 7% of British children attend fee-paying schools, students from private schools make up 43.2% of Oxford students! I mean, is that classist or what??

How can we say that where you get to in life is dependent on solely how hard you work when we have figures such as these staring us in the face? We all know that Oxbridge-educated people dominate the political sphere. David Cameron went to Brasenose College, Oxford, Ed Milliband went to Corpus Christi College, Oxford and Nick Clegg went to Cambridge (don’t expect me to give further details, we two universities are arch rivals!). I write from a college where the first and only female Prime Minister of the UK so far, Margaret Thatcher, and India’s first woman Prime Minister, Indira Ghandi, completed their degrees. 

So it’s evident that people that go to universities like these are more likely to have a say in the running of their countries. If they’re more likely to have a say in how the country is run they will be directly impacting on the lives of thousands, even millions, of people. And if only one small subsection of society is allowed to have a say in how people live their lives, how are things ever going to change?

We need a change from the bottom-up. The working classes and middle classes need to be given a say in how the country is run – because they make up over 70% of the nation. When less than 20% of the country is making the decisions that affect everyone then things are never going to be fair.

That means that universities like Oxford and Cambridge have a duty to accept more working class and middle class students than they currently are. The education system at large needs a massive overhaul to get the less well-off and the more deprived on the straits to success. At present those who live in poorer, more crime-filled areas, are less likely to get admitted into good schools. ‘Good schools’ being those who provide an adequate amount of teaching staff with decent sized classes so that each student is given the opportunity to learn properly. They are also more likely to be encouraged to take more vocational paths, being whispered the lie they are not skilled enough to go into the field of academics. And of course it is those who go into the academic field that end up having the most power in society. So the false consciousness to which the Marxists referred – the state of being that the working classes often find themselves in: where they are so accustomed to being exploited that they no longer question it and instead adopt the views of their oppressors – becomes instrumental in maintaining the status quo.

Many repeat that oft-used phrase: “They’re taking all our benefits!” to excuse the mistreatment of the working classes. But what they fail to realise is that the “scroungers” that sit on their bums all day and get paid by the state are very much in the minority: an unfortunate piece of the puzzle but very much in the minority. There are thousands of people in this country who work hard but find themselves displaced from the top-earning positions in the world of work (for reasons I have discussed above) and rather find themselves earning just enough to be out of the benefits cap but not enough to live comfortably. With childcare costs at a ridiculous high, many young families find themselves in debt before they have hardly gotten off the ground – and still they find themselves faced with that mantra: “Work hard and you’ll get where you want in life.”

It’s for people like this that I believe we need a re-structuring of wealth distribution. The richest 10% of the UK population owns something like 40% of the wealth. That’s just not fair – especially when those at the top largely didn’t work for what they had, but were just born into it – whilst those at the bottom find themselves dealt an unappealing deck of cards.

Race

Equality of opportunity is important again when we consider the structural inequalities that result from divisions along racial lines. Racism just isn’t over. If you’ve read my post about racism and the role of ignorance, you’ll already be familiar with the advice that black parents are wont to give their children:  “Work twice as hard at everything you do, because it’s going to take twice as much effort for you to get as far as a white person”.

If the working classes are in the minority in Oxford then ethnic minorities are an even rarer find. Out of term-time I live in the highly ethnically diverse and multicultural city in the North of England known as Manchester. It’s a vibrant place of friendly faces. The contrast between Manchester and Oxford couldn’t really be more different – when I return to the city of Dreaming Spires it’s literally a game of ‘spot the black people’. I can remember when I told a friend that I had been admitted into this university. He said: “You’ll be the only black person there!”

Figures have shown that in years past, over 25% of white applicants to Oxford University were successful, with only 17.2% of ethnic minority applicants getting in. White applicants to Medicine were twice as likely to get a place as minority ethnic candidates, even when they had all obtained 3 A* grades. Institutional racism is very clear to see. Only 3.9% of Oxford’s professors are of a BME (black, minority ethnic) background, to talk less of the curriculum being fiercely Eurocentric. Oh and don’t forget, one of the world’s most notorious racists has a library and a scholarship in his name over here. (That would be Mr. Cecil Rhodes, the man behind the apartheid in South Africa.)

Thankfully I don’t go to one of those super elitist colleges in Oxford where I’d be the only black person there in 5 years, or the only person from the North of England in my year, or something ridiculous like that. Somerville College is one of the more open and diverse colleges, with the majority of students having attended state schools. (I’m also proud of it for being one of the first colleges in Oxford to cater for women.) However that hasn’t made me oblivious to the racism that unfolds here in this university on a daily basis. 

Every time I go to a debate at the Oxford Union I am genuinely astonished by just how oblivious some people are to the plight of others, and just how easily they can spew racist bigotry without batting an eyelid.

Equality of opportunity as far as race is concerned is imperative if we are to see true social justice take place in the nations of the world. Ethnic minorities find themselves more likely to be demonised by the police, more likely to find themselves out of work, less likely to get good housing, less likely to be believed when filing a crime complaint . . .

The status quo keeps the traditional owners of wealth and power at the top. They “keep us in our place” by telling us that we’re not good enough, not pretty enough, (here I explore the relation between capitalism and the “beauty industry”), not skilled enough.

Disability

Disabled people are a group I fear we don’t talk enough about. They’re often forgotten in discussions about discrimination and equality. They shouldn’t be: there are over 11 million people living in the UK with a long term illness, impairment or disability, meaning they often cannot work. The school of thought that puts society first says that everyone should have the same amount of wealth so that we can all lead fair lives even if we're born into difficult positions: those who are on the capitalist side will only make those who are hurting the hurt even more. (click here to read more about how disabled people are already unfairly treated under current law.) Not a very just system, I don’t think.

I’m a socialist because I believe in social justice: fairness and equality in society. And I think I’ve explained why I don’t think capitalism is the best model for this: ‘the love of money’ gets to people’s heads and makes them forget what humanity is all about. As a Christian, reminded of the importance of helping those less fortunate than myself, I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing anything other than supporting the side that puts society’s interests at heart. That’s a much better picture of society to strive for than the one that we currently have.