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tigmatisation is a multi-level process – it can take place at the public, the institutional, the interpersonal and the individual level. The ‘public’ is that space – real or virtual - where people meet for any range of activities. This can be a park, a pub, an office, a place of worship, public transport, a cemetery, a shopping mall, or even an airplane. Most models of stigma in public health research direct attention to theTROISIÈME PARTIE
‘public level’ as the source of stigma: stigma enacted at all other levels is rooted in the public or social context within which the interaction occurs. Without this context, there would be no social meaning affixed to attributes, statuses and conditions. Arguably, if stigma is weakened at the public level, discrimination will reduce at the other levels.
Public stigma refers to the meanings that prevail in these spaces, that are given force and traction in this sphere. It can be defined as a collective negative reaction that confers lower social status and power to those who possess the stigmatized attribute.
No single person is responsible for public stigma, yet it resides ‘in the air’ invisibly polluting the environment for groups and individuals, who due to stigma are invisible or deliberately make themselves invisible. Guinier and Torres use the image of a miner’s canary to explain the unseen harm that lurks in the environment:
"..Miners often carried a canary into the mine alongside them. The canary’s more fragile respiratory system would cause it to collapse from noxious gases long before humans were affected, thus alerting the miners to danger. The canary’s distress signaled that it was time to get out of the mine because the air was becoming too poisonous to breathe. Those who are racially marginalized are like the miner’s canary: their distress is the first sign of a danger that threatens us all […] One might say that the canary is diagnostic…" (Guinier and Torres, 2002 : 11-12)
Public stigma can be compared to these poisonous gases that hang ‘in the air’ – although invisible, they are damaging and potentially deadly. Psychological research suggests that public stigma can damage persons independent of interaction, as Steele demonstrates in his study of ‘stereotype threat’. Law may be designed to tackle stigma but if culturally embedded stigma will continue to exist, acting as an invisible backdrop to everyday discrimination.
Invisibility makes stigma difficult, but not impossible, to tackle. Like a virus such as the flu, public stigma must be tackled if discrimination is to be effectively challenged. It is therefore instructive to consider how public health viruses are effectively tackled. In order to effectively contain a virus, action must be taken at the individual, interpersonal, institutional and public levels. For example, in order to combat an outbreak of flu, action must be multi-level and joined up, focusing on the public as well as the individual: an outbreak cannot be contained by treating just one or the other - individuals must take medication, action is taken to prevent transmission, institutions are sanitised and public education campaigns are undertaken. The same applies to discrimination – prosecution of individuals is not enough to tackle enduring discrimination. The stigma that ‘hangs in the air’ informing individual acts of discrimination must also be addressed at the institutional and social level to prevent and correct transmission.
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Conclusion
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As put in the title of a paper, the stigmatized are ‘belittled, avoided, ignored and denied (Ilic et al). Tackling discrimination as stigma can create an anti-discrimination law that centralises intersectional discrimination as a norm of anti-discrimination law, and thus addresses institutional and social discrimination alongside interpersonal discrimination.
In addition, discrimination as stigma can offer a range of vantage points from which to address the ongoing challenge of discrimination. This can be done in a way that is flexible but not flaccid and also responsive to the contemporary ways in which individual, institutional and organisational acts of discrimination occur. Consequently, the anti-stigma principle makes social and environmental action to combat discrimination a necessity rather than an option. It offers an opportunity to think about discrimination as a ‘virus’ and adopt the multi-level and multi-institutional strategies used by public health specialists in the field of anti-discrimination law.
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guinier Lani and torres Gerald, The Miners Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power and Transforming Democracy, Harvard University Press, 2002, 400 p.
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iliC Marie, reineCKe Jost, Bohner Gerd, roettgers Hanss-Onno, et al., “Belittled, Avoided, Ignored, Denied:
Assessing Forms and Consequences of Stigma Experiences of People with Mental Illness”, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 2013, 35/1, pp. 31-40.
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solanKe Iyiola, “Where are the Black Lawyers in Germany?”, in Eggers Maureen Maisha, Kilomba Grada, piesChe Peggy et arnDt Susan (ed.), Mythen, Masken und Subjekte. Kristische Weißseinsforschung in Deutschland, Münster, Unrast, 2005, pp. 179-188.
solanKe Iyiola, Discrimination as Stigma: A Theory of Anti-Discrimination Law, Hart Publishing, 2017, 256 p.
Références bibliographiques
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