Chapter 3: Addressing Exclusion through Confrontation

It is evident from the incidents recounted by respondents throughout this book that people face discrimination in varying degrees, targeting different aspects of their identities, based on: gender expressions, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, diversability, mental illness, and religion – all of which are protected classes for anti-discrimination laws, including a host of unprotected classes, which include educational background, dialect, appearance, different disciplines of work, and others highlighted previously. Mallett and Melchiori (2019, p. 95) believe that people with stigmatised identities are often targets of discrimination, and they are forced to make daily decisions about how to respond to perpetrators of discrimination. A research respondent referred to a hurdle he faced when he started work at an organisation: “My first obstacle was dealing with the Western perception of how I should look. Dreadlocks were considered unacceptable … even with a Hugo Boss suit, but I challenged them on this …” (P38). Discrimination continuously shifts – it may occur behind people’s backs or face-to-face and can range from being subtle to being openly hostile. According to Mallett and Melchiori (2019), ignoring the behaviour often has the immediate effect of firstly protecting the perpetrator and conveying a sense of acceptance of the perpetrator’s discriminatory behaviour which serves to uphold and perpetuate the bias. On the other hand, challenging the perpetrator threatens their sense of security and assuredness but may satisfy the need for respect, bolster mental and physical health, and potentially reduce the perpetrator’s prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behaviour (p. 95). How individuals confront discrimination depends largely on how they experienced it, the nature of these experiences and its frequency, as well as on the individual’s personality and the environment in which they experience such discrimination. All experiences, including discriminatory experiences, are subjective and internalised forms of thought, which are constructed and influenced both by a person’s biography (life history) and by the psychological, social, and cultural conditions within which they occur (Jarvis et al., 2003, p. 54). Ashburn-Nardo et al. (2008) proposed the confronting prejudiced responses (CPR) model, outlining various obstacles that can stand in the way of confrontation. Specifically, the CPR model suggests that for people to confront prejudice and discrimination, they must recognise the behaviour as prejudiced, perceive it as an emergency that requires an immediate response, feel a sense of personal responsibility for intervening, decide on a course of action, and see the benefits of confronting as outweighing the costs of not doing so.