A Journey to “Acceptance”

How 2 Stories Represent The True Problems of Labels

The idea of acceptance is one that has been around since the very beginning and yet is still something that feels so vague. How do you define acceptance? Is it the acceptance of differences or is it merely the acknowledgement that these differences exist and not commenting on them? In a society where we are facing discrimination of race, sexuality and even disabilities, how far have we really come in understanding what the word truly means? Acceptance is relative, some people believing that even the smallest degree of recognition and inclusiveness is enough for them. When looking at the never-ending story of prejudice against so many different kinds of people, it’s nearly impossible to forget how hard it is to solve this problem, especially since society’s prejudices are ones that are personal and deeply rooted in some form of values, beliefs or situations they have faced in the past. The real problem with this injustice is the fact that people don’t know the stories of these people, the ones that are not distorted with the bias and confusion of politics and influence, and immediately jump towards the solution of labels. The labels that people bestow upon others are ones that represent one part of who they are, not all of it. Their stories are not told for what they are, stories of ordinary people and, occasionally, extraordinary circumstances. So how do you go about getting the justice their stories deserve, surpassing all the discrimination? How do you begin to journey into acceptance, one story at a time?

For Joy Haugen, a Sudanese woman who fled South Sudan in 1999 at the age of 15 to the United States to escape the ongoing conflict there, acceptance was something her story didn’t get to see for quite some time. As a refugee, she reminisces how when she first moved to Minnesota in the USA, the journey to find acceptance in her community seemed endless. With her dark skin and jet black hair, her family was the only “different looking people there”. She started her High School education in America, facing even more problems once she started school. The children in her school did not know anything about her, except that she was a refugee seeking asylum. She said that she began to lose her identity as Joy, a human being, and instead transformed into Joy, the “refugee girl”. Joy faced enormous hurdles in her journey to make a home in the US, with her neighbours not inviting her family to join in gatherings and constantly being referred to as a refugee. Being a refugee became a title that she could not get rid of no matter how hard she tried. On top of this, the only story being told about the refugee crisis was that they are coming to “steal” jobs, she said. With the only title imposed on Joy being one that held such a negative connotation, there was nothing that she could do to change people’s minds about her. “The fear stops people from getting to the truth”, says Joy Haugen, when asked about why she thinks that people find it hard to understand the reality of the story.

Over time, she worked towards changing their mindset of her, joining many new clubs in an effort to find herself again and begin to bridge that barrier. When the students of her high school began to see her as more than a label, she began to make many friends. Her story of gradual acceptance is one that is truly inspiring as she went from an outsider to a member of the community. If Joy had continued to listen to the news which portrayed refugees as dangerous and her classmates which labelled her as only one thing, she never would have gained the confidence in herself and her identity. Her acceptance came with years of struggle, but once another side of her story was told that helped people relate to her, one of a regular teenage girl trying to fit in, she surpassed her label and the word “refugee” became just that: a title which doesn’t define her, but instead just makes up a small part of who she is.

Similarly to Joy Haugen, this next story is one that also talks about the trials of the long journey to acceptance, however, this one is with even more tribulations. This is the story of the people we immediately choose to shun from society out of the fear we have for them, ex-convicts. These people are the ones who have committed crimes in their past, did time in jail for it, and have been released back into society. These are the people which face a lot of discrimination and hate once they are released because of the fear we all carry that they will re-offend. These people, once they offend, never get to see acceptance ever again. A lot of people will argue that they deserve this treatment because they knew the consequences as soon as they offended. A man who does not share these views on ex-cons is Dr Christian Perrin, a criminal psychologist who specialises in the rehabilitation of sexual and violent offenders. He currently works at the Singapore campus of the University of Liverpool as a Criminology lecturer but also works with the Police on criminal behaviour.

Over the course of his career, he was worked in numerous prisons where he has worked on developing a programme which will aid in the rehabilitation and eventual release of previous offenders. He has spent most of his career in building a programme which can help convicts work through their problems and eventually be released back into society. The biggest setback that he explains is the views society has on ex-cons that are released. “It affects it very negatively,” he says when asked to describe what effect society’s views and the media has on the progress of rehabilitation. Progress is only “dependent on the society they come back into,” says Dr Perrin with a hint of frustration. The second the media labels ex-cons as dangerous, society is inclined to take more “punitive” measures. Ex-cons are less likely to get good jobs and usually end up reoffending because of the “hostile environment” that they go back into, explains Dr Perrin. The labels that these people receive, that they are “predators” and “dangerous” makes it extremely difficult for them to find acceptance in society and only succeed in setting back progress even more. According to a paper developed by researchers at Cambridge titled “Following Incarceration, Most Released Offenders Never Return to Prison” (Gaes), 2 out of 3 people who serve their time in prison do not end up in jail again. So why is it that people still believe that these people are a threat to civilisation? Once they receive the title of “ex-convict”, they can never get rid of it and it is a permanent barrier in their way to acceptance. Society only knows one side of these people, the one that the media is misinterpreting, without understanding that even the most dangerous people can change and the fact that they can, makes them deserving of at least some acceptance.

When looking at how acceptance as an issue can be fixed, it can be easy to look too far into the big picture. When you zoom out far too much, you lose sight of where this problem began: with us. The only way we can truly ever move into a society which accepts all of us for who we are is by remembering that we are the ones who made these labels. Bringing around change starts with you, me, the person sitting next to you. Everyone. A supportive and inclusive society is impossible to achieve, especially because who defines “supportive”? For some people, “supporting” and “accepting” people means accepting those who are privileged to always receive it. The way to combat this issue is very simple. We take a step back and look at ourselves. Do we look at people and judge them based on the stories people tell us? Whether true or not, it does not matter. Have we ever used a media source as a way to lump together whole groups of people without acknowledging the idea that they are all still different? By looking at ourselves and making the smallest impact amongst our communities is truly the way to work towards a society that supports one another.

Bibliography:

Education, US Department of. “SAD_Hortons_Kids 114.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 27 Aug. 2013, http://www.flickr.com/photos/departmentofed/9605585697.

Gaes, Gerald, et al. “Following Incarceration, Most Released Offenders Never Return to Prison.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0011128714549655.