Undoing Discrimination

BY CHRISTINA STARR

One of the biggest challenges to this second wave of feminism has been to eradicate racism and other forms of discrimination from our theories, philosophies, policies, and actions. Feminism has, to some extent, been responsible for waking up patriarchy to the reality of discrimination of all sorts, but too often feminism has also represented only the interests of those who are white, educated, able-bodied, and heterosexual. Probably no social movement is without its prejudices; the habit of relegating people to slots in a hierarchy is too well taught and too pervasively practiced for anyone to simply shake even as they recognize its injustice.

At a recent talk to promote her latest book. Talking Back, bell hooks, black American feminist, writer, and teacher, spoke about the current popularity of racial issues and warned against the tendency of the privileged to eagerly espouse ant discriminatory policies without the practice. She asked the white people in her audience "What have you done lately to show solidarity with those who are oppressed?"

Some of the articles in this issue are about things that can be done. Shauna Butterwick re-visits for us the strategies behind the early consciousness-raising groups and discusses how some women, who had never before been listened to, created for themselves a "safe space" in which to speak and be heard. She challenges CCLOW as an organization to make use of consciousness-raising techniques both internally and toward the larger community to raise awareness of social divisions based on gender, class, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Karlene Faith and June Sturrock reveal how distance education schools have used their technology to reach those who would be otherwise isolated and ignored. And a commentary on the community-based Outreach projects argues the necessity of allowing these programs to continue their specially designed employment counseling services to disadvantaged groups.

In her report on the CCLOW conference held in Halifax last June, Barbara Cottrell describes how the organizers were determined to present workshops that appealed to young women, older women, rural women, women of colour, women with disabilities, to those who are new to feminism, and those who have been practicing it for some years. She describes in particular the response elicited by a workshop entitled "Women Overcoming Barriers" where women who face very particular prejudices welcomed the opportunity to share their experiences, and made explicit the need for such opportunities to continue.

The Editorial Board of CCLOW adopted at its last meeting a policy which it hopes will also be part of the action to reduce discrimination. It governs the solicitation and acceptance of content for WEdf and it goes like this:

1. Women's Education des femmes will not publish any articles which include inaccurate or injurious statements about people based on their gender, age, race, social class, ethnicity; or sexual orientation.
   
   
2. The editor, editorial board, and guest editors will ensure authors do not make generalizations about all people based on information about a no representative subgroup. For example, a discussion of "women's education desires" which is based only on white middle-class women's experience must specify this limitation.
   
   
3. The editor, editorial board, and guest editors will actively solicit articles that are written by and about women from oppressed groups (women of color, women of minority ethnic groups, disabled women, working class women, older or younger women, and lesbians).

Since, as has been noted, policies are one thing and action another, it is hoped that readers of WEdf will also be active in writing to let us know if anything contained in an issue of the magazine contradicts what has been espoused.

As progressive as such policies may be, it is still important to be aware of the complexities of labelling groups of people in order to "target" them. Glenda Simms in this issue describes how being termed a member of a "visible minority" ultimately denies her identity and requires that she conform to an externally imposed definition of herself. She asks why it should be so hard for Canadian society to include and treat fairly all Canadians; the challenge for organizations within that same society is to address this question squarely, honestly, and to work to eradicate the need for labels of all kinds.

Christina Starr is the Managing Editor of Women's Education des femmes.