Show that you can also be useful!
The discourse of hatred often calls certain social groups useless. It can only be partially refuted through listing the difficulties a given group is facing. It’s a lot more effective and convincing to demonstrate that everyone is indeed capable of creating value and doing something that is useful for others as well. Each individual and group has different strengths. But if we map these strengths appropriately, and provide an opportunity for developing these skills and creating services and products related to them, we are able to provide actual results to prove the fact that there are no groups whose members are unable to create value for others.
So for example while young people with Williams syndrome and an intellectual disability are excellent event organisers thanks to their good communication skills, Roma women, the champions of housework, are able to run a successful apartment restaurant. And autistic youth, due to their unique perspective, can create pictures that manage to inspire even the best applied artists.
Beside the minority groups, getting to know the different groups personally can be very meaningful for the members of the majority as well, and they are also able to give them something. For example, they can take disabled people unable to ride a bike by themselves on a tandem bycicle ride, or they can help underprivileged Roma children in studying. Because if you get a first-hand experience of the fact that you can also do something for others, and you get to see the change, joy, and success that you have contributed to, you will be less likely to believe that the improvement of the lives of underprivileged groups is only up to them. The discourse of hatred often wants people to believe that it is solely the minorities themselves that are responsible for their difficulties, and it claims that these difficulties often cannot be changed even in spite of the best intentions of the majority.
But change is in the hands of all of us that do something in order to create value for the society we live in – regardless of our background and situation.
Related articles:
What do the Roma feed us with?