Authors:

Aga Byrczek

Carlo Andorlini

Dariusz Grzemny

Silvia Volpi

Stefania Zamparelli

Tea Stanic

Vladislav Petkov

Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-SA

This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon this work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms

Co-funded by the Erasmus + Programme of the European Union.

The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

INTRODUCTION

Shining in the dark

Since human rights became a central concept in the development of the world, there has been a shared optimism about the existence of a clear movement towards equality and that getting there, although at times slow, is inevitable. This is no longer the case. With nationalistic political movements gaining traction around Europe, and the world, the promise of human rights for everyone was put into question – something which we all thought was undebatable after the horrors of World War II. Yet, with its easy narratives and its ability to sоw and harvest discontent, the politics of hate have gained support including among others, young people, and have turned against the most vulnerable categories: ethnic minorities, migrants, people of colour, LGBTI people, and women. Not only progress for their full social inclusion has been threatened, but some countries are also scaling back on policies and failing to address the structural issues of racism and other forms of intolerance. While traditional forms of racism are getting increasingly neglected, new racist manifestations, like online hate speech, are escalating in a whole new dimension of the virtual world.

While youth work is traditionally linked to topics such as intercultural dialogue, human rights, inclusion and anti-racism, it is fair to say that efforts have not been enough. Youth work has often focused on superficial slogans about tolerance and denunciation of extreme manifestations of racism, failing to both understand and deconstruct how deeply racism is embedded in our societies, how omnipresent it is in our cultures, policies and practices and how profound the need to work with ourselves and our target group is in order to create a truly comprehensive antiracist mindset. How racism relates to power, how to deal with the emotional burden that racism is attached to, what modes of thinking and behaviour can be offered as an alternative (for example, good treatment) have been overlooked. Furthermore, way too often conversations about racism and intolerance have been without the voices of the people who suffer the most of it.

This manual is an attempt to fill in some of these gaps and cater for some of these needs. It is meant to better prepare professionals, volunteers and peers to work on the topic of racism with young people, giving them both a more comprehensive conceptual framework for this and concrete educational tools. A central role is dedicated to the understanding that racist ways of thinking do not only generate extreme acts of violence like genocide over communities or hate crimes over the individual, but also that it has an overwhelming presence in our everyday lives under the form of racial microaggressions. Being so common, frequent and normalized, these microaggressions are what we call here invisible racism and what most of this manual is dedicated on. Exploring invisible racism allows us to see the magnitude of the problem with racism, the levels in which it is embedded in our societies, the harmful consequences it has on minorities and the need for proactive measures to eliminate it.

This introduction might seem a bit dark, but darkness is only culturally constructed to mean ‘bad’. It is only in darkness that we can see the stars which form beautiful groupings: constellations. We invite you to use this manual to construct your own constellations which will shine brightly enough to make the invisible racism visible, as well as to show the way forward.

Who is this manual for?

This manual is primarily developed for professionals who plan and facilitate learning processes and activities with young people. This will include trainers, facilitators, educators and youth workers who have the space and the time to work on the topic of racism continuously within their usual activities or in the framework of specific training processes. The presented tools are based on the principles of non-formal education, but many of them could easily be used in the framework of the formal educational system. In developing the manual, we have tried to meet the need to provide practical and ready-to-use education tools for young people. However, we have also strived to provide a comprehensive theoretical background for these professionals to work on the topic of racism. While in youth work one can come across the idea that if a facilitator is equipped with proper methodologies, they do not need to have deep understanding on all topics that they cover (as knowledge is constructed within the group), we do not believe this is the case, especially when it comes to racism. On the contrary, in order to tackle racism (and invisible racism), one needs to be able to understand the complexity of the problem in advance and the concepts to which it is connected, so that a meaningful and comprehensive learning and action process can be planned and delivered. In other words, the manual is appropriate both for professionals with prior knowledge and understanding of the topic of racism and for those who might have not been sufficiently prepared to work with it.

While we have tried to cover many concepts in this manual, some of which might be abstract or complicated, we have attempted to do so in a user-friendly way. The texts on topics and approaches in this manual are often provided with examples, cases and metaphors so that they can be hopefully relatable to young people themselves, especially leaders and peer educators who aspire to work on the topic of racism with their peers.

Finally, as this manual puts forward some novel ideas and ways to approach racism, we hope it will also reach not only practitioners, but experts, policy- and decision-makers who might have their role in setting new trends in the way the topic is tackled in youth work, training and education. It would be important for them to point out that the content of this manual was not born out of thin air, but it is the result of extensive testing and practical work with thousands of young people through summer camps, school workshops and community meetings in four European countries. This manual is thus evidence-based and puts forward concepts and tools that we know are effective in building a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of racism with young people.

How to use the manual?

The manual is built upon three main constellations, reflected in the way it is divided in chapters.

In Chapter 1, TOPICS, we strive to give an overview of the main concepts which we believe should go hand in hand with exploring racism when working with young people. It includes six topics, which are explored in detail in order to well prepare the users of the manual for any process they plan to undertake with youth. Some of these topics are traditionally explored when it comes to racism (e.g. Stereotypes and prejudices, hate speech), while others are relatively new (Emotional awareness, Power relations and Good treatment). We would strongly recommend for any user of this manual to read through the sub-chapter on Invisible racism and microaggression as it goes to the heart of the question of what invisible racism is. Understanding this concept will be crucial for planning and delivering many of the educational activities in this manual.

Chapter 2, TOOLS, consists of a number of practical educational activities that are developed in a way to make them as hands-on as possible for a practitioner to use. The tools are arranged in alphabetical order and an overview is provided to describe how each of them relates to the topics explored in Chapter 1, in an easy-to-use table view. We have kept many of the traditional elements of how a tool is presented (topics, needed materials, step-by-step procedure, and debriefing questions), but we have left out many elements usually seen in other manuals and toolkits: e.g. group size, time needed, and learning objectives. We have done so because in our experience these indications are always subjective and depend on the facilitation style and/or the trainers’ competencies, as well as on the specific context and cultural environment. In our experience, the same activity could be conducted in thirty minutes (due to school curricular restraints) or in an hour and a half during a summer camp. Of course, the learning impact of the latter would be much bigger, but that does not imply that the first one is completely useless. In other words, by providing fewer requirements and frameworks, we hope to give more freedom to trainers and facilitators to select tools that will serve their specific situation. For the same reason, we have not offered any particular order of the tools, but rather have attempted to provide individual stars for the user to be able to build a constellation that will cater for the need of the young people they work with in the best way possible. Surely enough, this requires developed training and facilitation competencies on the side of the manual user and this is a need we do not meet here. However, for beginners, we could recommend our online training course “Make It Visible”, which is available for free in a self-paced version on www.youth-mooc.eu (in English and Spanish).

In Chapter 3, APPROACHES, you can learn more about some transversal and added-value ways to improve your work with young people on the topic of racism: how to plan your learning processes in the framework of a community engagement process and use this process to further promote anti-racism; how to prepare young people to act as peer educators and facilitate learning on racism with other young people; how to engage and empower young people from minority groups in your anti-racist educational and campaigning activities and how to make sure anti-racism is not limited to your educational process, but it is well-embedded in your organisation with all the activities it does. All of the above are based on practical experience and are presented in the attempt to amplify the impact of our antiracist initiatives while putting them in a wider context at the same time.

The STAR project

This manual was created within the context of a long-term international initiative called ‘Stand Together Against Racism – STAR’ which was implemented in Spain, Italy, Poland and Bulgaria in the period 2017-2020 with the financial support of the Erasmus + programme.

The project allowed partners from these four countries to share their best practices in working with young people on the topic of racism and put forward the idea of invisible racism. It allowed four partner organizations to co-create a number of educational tools and use them with direct engagement with thousands of young people in the framework of eight summer camps, over five hundred school workshops and eighty community meetings. This manual is widely based on this local level experience.

The STAR project also seeks to scale up its achievements by disseminating them across peer organizations, professionals working with youth and policy makers in Europe. To achieve that, apart from publishing the Constellation manual, we also created a Massive Open Online Course (available on www.youth-mooc.eu), organized a number of dissemination events and trainings in our communities, and launched advocacy campaign to call for more and better processes with young people tackling the issues of racism and invisible racism. We are maintaining a thematic website www.invisible-racism.eu and social media accounts on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/STARprojectKA3/) and Instagram (@invisibleracism).

TOPICS

Stereotypes and prejudices

People who are aware of, and ashamed of, their prejudices are well on the road to eliminating them.

Gordon Allport

Stereotypes surround us and are in our heads almost every minute of our lives. Is it bad? Not necessarily. Thanks to them we make decisions faster, we recognise things or people more easily and we are able to say if something is good or bad for us. When you see a thing consisting of a weighted "head" made of steel fixed to a long handle, you are able to say it is a hammer, whatever it looks like. When you are walking home alone through a park at night and you see a group of people coming from the opposite direction, you are usually trying to look for other people around you to help you, just in case. But imagine other situations: you sprained your ankle and needed to go to the emergency room at the hospital. Unfortunately, you need to wait for the doctor. The waiting room is full of people and the only free seat available is by a man with dark skin and you decided not to sit by him as he might be Roma. Well, this is what we call microaggression or “invisible racism” (sometimes also “subtle racism”), which is based on stereotypes.

What is what?

In social science, stereotypes are specific cognitive representations of different groups of people. Stereotypes are usually very durable and not prone to change. These cognitive representations are extremely generalized and reductive simplifying reality. All this is connected with strong evaluative feelings (this is good, that is bad).

Not all stereotypes are the same. Some of stereotyped groups are considered useless (e.g. the elderly), some are seen as threatening (e.g. some national or ethnic minorities), some are seen as “sweet” (e.g. women), some are cold and inhuman (e.g. rich people) and some are considered disgusting (e.g. LGBT people). In 2002, Susan Fiske and her colleagues developed the Stereotypes Content Model (SCM) that assumes that all stereotypes form along two main content dimensions: warmth and competence. These are two dimensions on which individuals and groups are assessed. Warmth relates to someone’s trustworthiness and also a person’s intentions towards another person. This can be either warm (feeling of trust and connection) or cold (mistrust and no connection). Competence is about someone’s capabilities – when someone is perceived as capable - the emotions related to admiration appear (but sometimes also jealousy) and when someone is seen as incapable, the feelings of rejection or disgust may appear. For example, poor people may be blamed for their condition (lack of resources) due to their incompetence (poor education), while other factors that influence poverty may be totally neglected (such as: economic injustice, loss of income due to illness or death of a partner). It should be noted that a low or high score in one of those dimensions can be combined with a high or low score in another dimension. The authors of the model came up with the scheme (presented below) to explain different types of stereotypes and feelings related to them.

This is of course one of the possibilities to explain the content of the stereotypes. This content is always related to feelings that appear in people who use stereotypes and also the attitudes and behaviour that follows. The feelings are mentioned in the table. Stereotypes lead to prejudices (attitudes) and then they can lead to discrimination or violence (behaviour).

Most of the stereotypes are learnt from our social environment – family, school, work, friends, etc. They are also reproduced in culture (films, school textbooks, advertisements). Language plays an important role in handing down and sustaining stereotypes (using negative terms to describe “others” and positive terms to describe the group we identify with).

Stereotypes may evolve over time and become prejudices - attitudes towards some groups of people based on unchecked, generalised and residual information. There are many types of prejudices, such as:

- Aversive – on the emotional level they are connected with feelings like: fear, anxiety, loathing or sense of danger. On the behavioural level, they usually lead to avoidance of some people or groups of people.

- Based on the idea of domination – emotionally, they are tied with the sense of superiority that usually leads to aggression.

- Internally contradictory – connected with ambivalent emotions: we can at the same time feel aversion and admiration. However, all in all, we consider ourselves as better people in such situations. On behavioural level this type of prejudice leads to keeping distance from people we do not like.

- Borderline prejudices – this category includes all types of behaviour that are not easy to classify, for example: they might be based on pre-judgments (e.g. we buy pink clothes for girls and blue for boys) or opinions, such as: if people hate them it means they deserve it, etc.

There are many reasons why we have stereotypes and prejudices. On a macroscale, they are the result of cultural, historical, social or economic factors. Psychologically, they come from the process of categorisation (grouping similar objects, labelling), they might be the result of frustration of conformism or, in some cases, they are the expressions of certain types of personality traits.

Prejudiced personality?

Nobody was born racist – how many times have you heard this? We strongly believe it is true: racism is learnt in the process of socialisation and even if social science offers some explanations about different personality traits, we need to remember that personality is also developed throughout life and there are many factors influencing this development: biological, cultural, social or family factors – so, all in all, it is a mix of nature and culture.

So, what does social science say about racism and personality? We would like to mention here two theories that may help us understand why some people are more prejudiced than others.

The theory of an authoritarian personality, developed by Theodor Adorno, is a mid-twentieth-century theory to explain the mass appeal of fascism and ethnocentrism. A person with an authoritarian personality shows a very strong respect towards power and holds a very hierarchical vision of the world, which usually goes hand in hand with upholding conservative values. Such a person, according to Adorno, is deprived of auto-reflection and does not tolerate weakness. A person with authoritarian personality believes aggression toward those who do not subscribe to conventional thinking, or who are different is justified. They also hold beliefs in simple answers and polemics – e.g. the media control us all or the source of all our problems is the loss of morals these days, etc. Adorno and his research colleagues developed the so-called F-scale (F for fascist), which purported to measure fascist tendencies by evaluating responses to a series of weighted questions.

Another theory, which may look very similar to Adorno’s, was developed by Milton Rokeach, an American social psychologist who tried to explain the reason for existing racial prejudices among Americans. He came up with the concept of dogmatic personality. People with this type of personality hold insulated groups of views and opinions, which are usually internally contradictory, but such people do not recognise this fact. They usually have a tendency to see their views as totally different from the views of the other people rarely seeing any similarities. They show respect toward “their own people” and anything that is foreign constitutes the source of threat. Dogmatic personality, contrary to the authoritarian one, does not have any ideological layer.

Both theories were criticised, and it is nothing new in the world of science.

Recently, a new study has been developed that shows that racism can be innate. Researchers led by psychologist and neuroscientist Dr. Elizabeth Phelps of New York University did functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scans showing that interactions between people from different racial groups trigger reactions that may be completely unknown to our conscious selves. This does not, however, mean that we are born racist and we cannot do anything about it. The results of this research only add one element to existing explanations about the stereotypes and the prejudices we have, and the cultural influence on our biological processes can never be left out.

Why stereotypes and prejudices can be dangerous?

Stereotypes do not only simplify the reality but when they lead to prejudices, they can also result in actions that are harmful or deadly for other people. Gordon Allport, an American psychologist, developed a scale, based on his research, to measure the manifestation of prejudice in a society. The scale contains five stages of prejudice ranked by the increasing harm they produce. The scale is often presented in a form of pyramid, such as presented below:

According to Allport, stereotypes and prejudices lead first to negative feeling that are expressed in a form of derogatory or hate speech. Antilocution (“speaking against”) is often believed to be harmless, but it can harm the self-esteem of the people of the target group, and it can pave the way for more harmful forms of prejudice. The line between violent words and violent acts is often very thin. Then it comes avoidance, isolation of groups we do not like or hate, which ends up in exclusion. Discrimination is the third step, and it is intended to harm a group by preventing it from achieving goals, getting education or jobs, etc. Discrimination, if not stopped, may lead to physical attacks, often called hate crimes that may end up in extermination (ethnic cleansing or genocide).

If you actively use social networks and you encounter hate speech, you can easily notice that the starting point is often very subtle (Why are these refugees coming to Europe? They should stay where they are), but the discussion it triggers off often leads to such expressions: “I do not want to have them around me (avoidance), they should not get any social support (discrimination), if I see a person like this I will punch him in his face (physical attack), we should kill them all (extermination)”. These are naturally nice words; however, the discussions on social media are far more violent.

Then, it is important to realise that small acts of aggression, so called microaggressions, are usually the starting point.

Can I do something about my stereotypes and prejudices?

Of course, you can. A good start is to stop pretending we do not have them and make young people realise they have them. We all hold stereotypes and prejudices and, whether we like it or not, they impact our own lives and other people’s lives. Therefore, it is good to be aware of them and make other people realise they do have them. There is nothing wrong about it.

The next step is to recognise stereotypes and prejudice in our close surrounding – when having a conversation among friends, when discussing something with other people, when watching TV or movies. It is sometimes hard to react, especially when we need to do it in a group of friends. When working with young people it is useful to do some activities that would help them recognise stereotypes and prejudices around them.

There is also a three-step strategy we can use in our personal life and in order to educate young people about it when we are witnessing a racist comment: STOP (I do not understand why you said it), ASK (why are you saying this? What makes you think so?), EDUCATE (tell the person it is racist or sexist and explain why). You can also ask other people around if they hold the same opinion. In such a situation many people immediately realise it was wrong.

References:

Theodor W. Adorno. 1975. Studies in the Authoritarian Personality, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.

Cuddy, A. J., Fiske, S. T., & Glick, P. 2008. Warmth and competence as universal dimensions of social perception: The stereotype content model and the BIAS map. Advances in experimental social psychology, 40, 61-149.

Gordon Allport. 1979. The Nature of Prejudice, Basic Books; Unabridged edition.

Jennifer T Kubota, Mahzarin R Banaji & Elizabeth A Phelps. 2012. The neuroscience of race, Nature Neuroscience volume 15: 940–948.

Milton Rokeach. 1960. The Open and Closed Mind. Investigation into the Nature of Belief Systems and Personality Systems, Basic Books, New York.

Hate speech

Hate speech is not a new phenomenon, though in recent years we have heard about it more often, which is most probably due to the fact that it has become widespread mainly on the Internet. The topic of hate speech triggers off lots of controversies related to the limits of freedom of speech. There are those who argue that hate speech should be tolerated, and that limiting it will lead to censorship and the impossibility of exercising full freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is a very important right for each of us - it helps us not feel restricted in thinking and expressing our thoughts. It is important for society as a whole and is the foundation of democracy. It should be taken into account, however, that freedom of speech is not an absolute right and may be subject to certain restrictions in order to protect the others’ dignity. It is often forgotten that hate speech and hate crimes violate many other human rights, such as the right to personal safety, the prohibition of discrimination, the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, the right to life or the right to own property.

Problems with definition

Defining hate speech is not easy. It is also not easy to distinguish what hate speech is from what is not.

Hate speech can be defined in legal terms, but the phenomenon itself, and thus the concept, appears in sociology, psychology or political science. The definitional problems also result from the fact that the term itself has become very politicised. There are voices that claim that action against hate speech is an attack on free speech, therefore it limits people’s freedom of expression.

Let us look at some definitions of hate speech. One of the most frequently quoted definitions in sociological literature was proposed by Lech Nijakowski according to which "hate speech consists of attributing particularly negative characteristics or calling for discriminatory actions against a certain social category, to which membership is perceived as "natural” (assigned) and not by choice" (Nijakowski 2008: 133). What is important here is the recipient, who is characterized by a certain feature of identity (attributed), e.g. specific gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic and national origin or skin colour. This definition also mentions calling for discriminatory actions. It therefore operates with the legal category of discrimination, which is well defined in national and international documents. Lech Nijakowski also says that whether a statement is “hate speech” it is determined by the social context: "a neutral text in one context, in another takes on a completely new dimension and is perceived as extremely racist". (Nijakowski 2008: 128).

The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, in one of its recommendations proposes a definition of hate speech for Member States of the organisation:

(Hate speech) covers all forms of expressions that spread, incite, promote or justify racial hatred, xenophobia, anti-Semitism or other forms of hatred based on intolerance. (Council of Europe 1997: 107)

The Council of Europe, and more specifically one of its institutions, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), significantly extended the definition of hate speech in 2015. In the ECRI Recommendation No. 15, hate speech is defined as follows:

(...) hate speech is advocacy, promotion or incitement, in any form, of the denigration, hatred or vilification of a person or group of persons, as well as any harassment, insult, negative stereotyping, stigmatization or threat in respect of such a person or group of persons and the justification of all the preceding types of expression, on the ground of "race", colour, descent, national or ethnic origin, age, disability, language, religion or belief, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation and other personal characteristics or status.  (Council of Europe 2015: 3)

This is not an easy definition, but it contains many very detailed explanations. In addition to supporting, promoting and inciting hatred, it also points out the justification of it. Hate speech, according to this definition, would therefore be any expression that tries, in an apparently neutral way, to justify the need to get rid of migrants from the territory of the country at any cost and in any way. This definition also indicates that hate speech can be expressed in any form. It does not have to be just words alone: films, mems, pictures or photos are also various forms of hate speech.

By defining hate speech, the authors of the study on freedom of speech in Norway give reasons for hate speech and its aims:

Hate speech reflects negative stereotypes, prejudice and stigma, and is based on perceptions of boundaries and hierarchies between groups. It builds on a rhetoric of exclusion, fear and contempt for individuals and groups that are deemed to be different, and can be seen as a way of doing. The purpose is to guard and highlight the boundaries between groups, and remind groups and individuals who are seen as ‘other’ of their rightful place in the social hierarchy (Midtbøen, Steen-Johnsen, Thorbjørnsrud 2017: 48).

The aim of hate speech is therefore to polarise society, thinking in terms of us (the best ones, the familiar ones) versus them (the worst ones, the strangers). Despite this it should be noted that polarisation itself can be the cause of hate speech.

Reasons for and consequences of hate speech

People use hate speech for various reasons. Sometimes it is very difficult to determine which intentions drive people to use hate speech: when hate speech appears on the Internet, we often do not know who is using it, we do not know what motivation there is behind it. Hate speech carries a greater or lesser emotional charge and is sometimes used in states of experiencing strong emotions associated with a situation that the perpetrator does not accept or strongly opposes. It is then easy, under the influence of a strong emotional impulse, to say or write something that you might later regret.

Using hate speech may be the result of existing stereotypes and prejudices that are present in society: these irrational presumptions about certain groups of people influence the way they are treated. They are blamed for practically everything: for the economic crisis, crimes, lack of happiness or a lost game. Hate speech may be the result of fear that is usually hard to explain (e.g. Muslims will flood Europe, we will never be safe again). People sometimes use hate speech because they have either low or high self-confidence / self-esteem. Hate speech may be also the result of certain social or historical conditions or even “family traditions”. Hate online may also be a kind of fashion – collecting hateful posts is treated by some people as a hobby – the more hate I generate or collect the more important I am. Hate speech, when re-posted or commented on a lot, can be monetised. Some clickbait media are willing to use hate speech as long as it brings them online traffic (and therefore benefits). Hate speech may be an expression of a certain ideology which is used by some groups that by default hate certain people. Sometimes people use hate speech as they have problems with communication. Hate speech is often the result of misinformation or lack of knowledge. So, the answer to the question would be: hate speech is most probably the result of a combination of the causes described in this paragraph.

Hate speech can have various consequences on different levels:

On individual level:

The experience of hate speech can be very traumatic. Hate speech can directly or indirectly have an impact on psychological well-being. People targeted with hate speech may show lower self-esteem. They may suffer from sleeping disorders, they may feel lonely or isolated, have symptoms of depression. They may also feel threatened and experience feelings of fear and insecurity. In most severe cases, they may self-harm themselves or attempt suicide.

Experiencing hate speech, especially when it happens over a long period of time may affect people’s life choices, related to their work (the feeling of being worthless may result in choosing a career other than planned), building personal and intimate relationships (lower self-esteem can lead to problems in finding a partner) or education (leaving school system).

Some of the consequences can be short-term (feeling of sadness) and some long-term (depression, life choices).

On community society level:

Besides affecting an individual, hate speech has an impact on a bigger scale:

Hate speech as a silencing mechanism: people targeted with hate speech may be discouraged to take part in public debate and voicing their opinions publicly. One of the reasons for hate speech is to remind different groups (usually minority groups) of their place in society, which is seen as inferior. Therefore, hate speech as a silencing mechanism constitutes a threat to democracy. It may stop people from taking part in democratic processes and therefore influence decisions that are important for society as a whole.

Hate speech may lead to normalisation of discrimination, intolerance and exclusion. Many young people do not consider hate speech as a problem but rather as a part of youth online culture. Therefore, they may not consider reacting to different occurrences of hate speech important. In such cases, hate speech is often linked to freedom of expression, forgetting that it is not an absolute right and that hate speech violates other human rights, such as: right to life (when someone is threatened or when someone decides to commit suicide as a result of hate speech), freedom from torture (when hate speech happens over a long period) or freedom from discrimination (when different minority groups are considered less worthy and seen as a threat to “our” culture, religion or lifestyle). This way of using discriminatory practices or exclusion may be seen as something justified.

Hate speech contributes to social polarisation and radicalisation of political and social attitudes. Public debate that allows hate speech makes people take extreme positions in relation to different political and social issues. In such examples hate speech is used to justify various political stands and opinions (e.g. scapegoating refugees or LGBT people in political debate). In such situations, there is no place for real political debate that takes into account different opinions. Hate speech becomes the fuel to express very radical views that are full of discriminatory remarks, and sometimes incite to violence towards various groups.

Hate speech may encourage and lead to abusive and violent acts. Some examples of hate speech constitute incitement to hate and violence. This may lead to violent attacks on peaceful demonstrations or marches, but it may also end up attacking individuals who are considered a part of a minority. In very severe cases, hate speech is used to justify violent attacks on bigger groups and can lead to segregation and extermination. Read more about ten stages of genocide here: http://genocidewatch.net/genocide-2/8-stages-of-genocide/

How to recognise hate speech?

In order to act against hate speech, one needs to be sure how to recognise it. The following points can help you distinguish between hate speech and other forms of aggressive/abusive verbal behaviour:

- It can be expressed in many different ways – blog post, comment, Facebook or Twitter post, picture, meme, and video.

- It can take many different forms – jokes, spreading rumours, threats, slander, and inciting to violence.

- The person is attacked for what she/he is (or what the perpetrator thinks she/he is), not usually for what she/he did. It is enough to have certain characteristics or feel a part of certain group. Sometimes the perpetrator defines the person who is targeted, for example, by assigning them certain characteristics, which in reality are not true.

- It often affects people belonging to a group that suffers from stereotypes and prejudices – hate speech is often the result of existing stereotypes and prejudices towards certain groups of people, like ethnic or national minorities, refugees, people identifying themselves with certain religious groups, people with disabilities, LGBTIQ people. Generally speaking, hate speech targets people with an identity different from the one of the perpetrator. Hate speech is the expression of racism, xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, intolerance and discrimination.

- It is usually very destructive for the person targeted and people who experience hate speech often feel helpless not knowing what to do. They feel uneasy, frightened, they lose self-confidence and sometimes attempt suicide. Hate speech can sometimes lead to hate crimes, that is to say, crimes that are motivated by prejudices targeting a person whose identity is different from the perpetrator’s. Hate crimes can take various forms: physical violence, destroying property, arson or killing. The victims are purposely chosen, only because of the characteristics they have. Such crimes are punishable by law.

- It aims at humiliating, dehumanising and making a person scared. – This is exactly the aim of hate speech, though it happens that the perpetrators do not realise it – they keep repeating some heard sentences, which they do not sometimes understand. They may not have the intention to hurt anybody.

- It targets a concrete person or groups of people. – Sometimes hate speech does not target a concrete individual, it is rather a generalisation about a group of people, e.g. “We all know Jews rule the world. We need to get rid of them and our country will become better” (Facebook)

- The content of hate speech makes violent response possible: often a post on social media that contains hate speech provokes other people to express their (very) violent opinions.

- Hate speech is violence: – it does not matter why someone decided to use it. It always humiliates people and their right to privacy and/or the right to safety are violated.

Hate speech and hate crimes

The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (ODIHR OSCE), defines hate crime as criminal acts motivated by bias or prejudice towards particular groups of people. To be considered a hate crime, the offence must meet two criteria: first, the act must constitute an offence under criminal law; second, the act must have been motivated by bias. The latter can be broadly defined as preconceived negative opinions, stereotypical assumptions, intolerance or hatred directed to a particular group that shares a common characteristic, such as race, ethnicity, language, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, gender or any other fundamental characteristic. People with disabilities may also be victims of hate crimes. (https://hatecrime.osce.org/what-hate-crime).

As seen from this definition, hate crimes are linked to the concept of hate speech. Hate speech is often an expression of existing prejudices in society, hate crimes are motivated by prejudices. Both definitions also indicate a catalogue of protected characteristics. However, there is one difference: the definitions of hate speech focus on purpose (humiliation, incitement to hatred, etc.), while the definitions of hate crimes clearly indicate motivation (hence hate crimes are often called crimes motivated by hate or prejudices). In order to prove that a person or group of people has committed a hate crime, law enforcement authorities must demonstrate that it was motivated by hate. Hate speech, by encouraging violence or hatred, may motivate or encourage people to commit hate crimes, such as: setting fire to a refugee/refugee centre, destroying a catering facility run by foreigners/foreigners, beating or killing an LGBTQI+ person. Hate speech often accompanies hate crimes – e.g. people setting fire to the centre for refugees during the crime often shout slogans which are an example of a hate speech.

Both concepts are highly controversial – and many legal theorists believe that hate speech in itself is a hate crime.  This is the case in situations when law clearly defines what is considered hate crime (e.g. calling to hate, threatening people because of their origin, etc.)

What to do?

Hate speech and hate crimes are violence that has negative consequences in the lives of people affected, but also has a negative impact on society as a whole.  Protecting oneself and others from violence is not only a moral duty of every person, but also a legal obligation. Everyone has the right to be respected and live in safety. So, it is worth taking the following actions:

- increase your knowledge of stereotypes, prejudices, discrimination and violence,

- critically analyse media messages and practice your critical thinking skills,

- respond to or report hateful social networking posts and hateful media content,

- support people who experience or have experienced hate speech or have become victims of hate crimes,

- when there is a suspicion of a crime, report hate speech, either directly to service providers or law enforcement authorities,

- actively engage in the activities of informal groups and NGOs that counteract hate speech and hate crimes,

This way you will contribute to change the world for the better: free of violence and discrimination.

References:

Council of Europe. 1997. Recommendation No. R (97) 20 of the Committee of Ministers to Member States on "hate speech”. URL: https://rm.coe.int/CoERMPublicCommonSearchServices/DisplayDCTMContent?documentId=0900001680505d5b

Council of Europe. 2015. ECRI General Policy Recommendation No. 15 on Combating Hate Speech. URL: http://rm.coe.int/ecri-general-policy-recommendation-no-15-on-combating-hate-speech/16808b5b01

Lech M. Nijakowski. 2008. Mowa nienawiści w świetle teorii dyskursu. In: Anna Horolets (red.). 2008. Analiza dyskursu w socjologii i dla socjologii. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek

Arnfinn H. Midtbøen, Kari Steen-Johnsen, Kjersti Thorbjørnsrud (red.). 2017. Boundary Struggles - Contestations of Free Speech in the Norwegian Public Sphere. Cappelen Damm Akademisk/NOASP

Invisible racism and Microaggressions

In recent years we have witnessed a lot of development in the theory of racism, and a lot of new adjectives to describe it: subtle, modern, micro, unconscious, every day, and invisible. Unfortunately, it does not mean that racism in its classical form does not exist, it does. However, there are studies that indicate that there are actions or non-actions, which many do not consider harmful, when in fact they are.

When we talk about invisible racism, we refer to the harmful behaviours which are considered normal and accepted by society. The line that draws between what we all know by racism and what invisible racism is, is a line of tolerance. Some examples of what invisible racism could be are people telling racist jokes, or avoiding contacts with a person coming from a different ethnic group by simply going to the other side of the street, or deciding not to date a person who is not white. These behaviours, although not considered harmful by many, lead to exclusion, anxiety, and influence people’s wellbeing.

While there are different terms to describe these behaviours, we have decided to consistently use the term ‘invisible racism’, due to its clarity and simplicity. However, to understand better how invisible racism works, we can look at other very much related theories – like the theory of microaggressions developed by Columbia University psychologist Derald Wing Sue.

To understand microaggressions, it might help to ask yourself the following questions: have you ever witnessed a situation or an act that you felt is violent but you could not explain why? Or have you ever been around someone who was telling you that an action was violent but you did not feel this way? If so, you have most probably witnessed a microaggression, something that you would not see if you did not know it existed. In the text below, we aim to define what microaggressions are, to see how harmful they are and explore them in depth.

What are microaggressions?

Let’s look at two definitions of microaggressions, both presented by Dr. Sue:

Microaggressions are brief, everyday exchanges that send degrading messages to certain individuals because of their group membership. (Sue, 2010)

Microaggressions are the brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioural, and environmental indignities whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, and sexual-orientation, and religious slights and insults that target a person or group. (Sue, Capodilupo, et al., 2007)

From these definitions we can already extract some of the characteristics of microaggressions:

- Microaggressions are brief: they can consist in a simple phrase or even one look that can go very easily unnoticed;

- Microaggressions are frequent: they happen on a regular basis, often daily;

- Microaggressions are directed at marginalised groups: similarly to discrimination, the most common are based on ethnicity (micro racism), gender (micro machismo) and sexual orientation (micro homophobia), but they can be directed as well to fat people or elderly people, etc.;

- Microaggressions are normalised: they are deeply rooted in culture, therefore they are often done in an unconscious way, and without the objective to really harm someone;

- Microaggressions contain a degrading message: a message that, if analysed, can turn out to be harmful, usually based on stereotypes

- Microaggressions are the result of power relations: often they are the expression of power that one has towards those with less power.

The element of power and power relations was not an explicit part of any of Sue´s definitions, but it is very relevant and is present in the definitions of micro machismo in Luis Bonino’s work (1998): who says that microaggressions (gender based) are a result of power relations. Bonino defines micro machismo as “the subtle and imperceptible manoeuvres and strategies for exercising male domination power in everyday life, which threaten women's autonomy to varying degrees. Skilled arts, tricks, and manipulations with which men try to impose their own reasons, desires and interests on women in everyday life.” We can observe in our societies that microaggressions are often used to reconfirm the position of power, or are caused by the fear of the possibility of losing power. Therefore, power relations should be always reflected upon when we discuss invisible racism.

Types of microaggressions

We can divide microaggressions into three main categories: micro insults, micro assaults and micro invalidations.

Microassault is the most direct form of aggression and the most similar to the old-fashioned sexism, racism or homophobia.  Microassaults are the explicit derogations that aim to hurt the target groups, make them feel unwanted, threatened, or inferior, and since they have those clear objectives they are conscious most of the time. Microassault can be verbal – for example calling a person ¨nigger¨, behavioural – for example not sitting next to the black person on public transportation, or environmental – hanging half-naked women pictures in a male manager´s office. As you can see from the examples, some of these behaviours are quite direct and for many people they are not micro anymore. However, they are considered microaggressions since there are still a lot of people who do not see anything violent in them.

The second type of microaggressions are microinsults which are communications that transmit rudeness and insensitivity, often based on stereotypes, and they are very likely to be unconscious. Very often their messages are so hidden that even the targets might not be aware of them immediately. Let us analyse an example from a classroom where we have a teacher complimenting a black student on their performance in school with the words ‘you are the credit to your race’. The student was complimented, and should feel good about it; the intentions of the teacher were good, to acknowledge the progress that the student is making. However, if we tried to deconstruct the message we might actually understand that the teacher decided to compliment the student, because of the stereotypes he or she has about the level of intelligence of black people, and the hidden message they are passing is that “Black people are generally not as intelligent as white people.”

Some of the most common themes of hidden messages from United States:

- Ascription of intelligence: assuming that some groups have better capabilities and level of intelligence. – For example, getting a black person mistaken for being a personal assistant of a CEO, based on the assumption, that ¨normally¨ black people are not able to get a master degree

- Second-class Citizen: communicating that certain groups are less worthy or less important. – For example, in restaurants giving smaller tables in more isolated places for black people and best tables for white people

- Assumption of criminal status: assuming that a person might be dangerous because of their skin colour or ethnic background. For example, going on the other side of the street when you pass a group of black people, on the basis of the assumption that they might be dangerous.

And there are many more different hidden messages that we are exposed to on a daily basis, and without a critical perspective we are learning them as true ones. The biggest source of this type of communication is media and although over the past few years we have observed the increase in diversity and representation, more recent and different reports state that there is still a lot of room for improvement. For example, in a report on whether Hollywood has been improving or failing recently in representation, Dr. Stacy L Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative took a comprehensive look at the film industry, examining 53,178 characters in 1,200 top films from 2007-2018, and found out that twenty-seven movies had leading or co-leading roles that featured characters from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. The percentage of characters from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups rose from 29.3% in 2017 to 36.3% last year.[1]

In the studies on consequences researchers have found that prolonged television exposure predicts a decrease in self-esteem for all girls and for black boys, but an increase in self-esteem for white boys. These differences correlate with the racial and gender practices in Hollywood, which predominantly show white men as heroes, while erasing or subordinating other groups as villains, sidekicks, and sexual objects.’[2] If we are exposed to this on a daily basis it is very likely that we will assume it as normal and start replicating those types of stereotype. It is how our brain works and therefore, it is so important to learn how to decode the messages we are getting critically.

There is a third type of microaggressions, called microinvalidation, which comprehends communications or clues that exclude, deny or nullify the thoughts, feelings or reality experienced by certain groups. The best example that can illustrate this type of microaggression is to make someone feel alien in their own land. It is a very common example of microracism, to compliment black people born in the country of incident, on their very good level of local language, or start speaking loudly and gesticulating more, assuming that they do not understand the language. The hidden message is clear and the person who is doing it, assumes that they are not holding the same nationality as they are, which leads to the creation of distance and the feeling of their identity being rejected.

Are microaggressions really harmful?

Unfortunately, microaggressions can be very damaging for the person’s body and mind, and their power lies in the continuity and the lack of actions from the side of bystanders. Imagine a fat woman who is throughout her life exposed to many microaggressions while on TV there is mainly one type of beauty shown, which is slim, and too often the fat ones are outsiders, unpopular etc. Possibly when she is eating out, she is exposed to judgmental looks, since most of us have the stereotype that if someone is fat it is because they eat a lot; then she overhears comments from her friends who gained a kilo and how terrible they feel about it. The number of microaggressions that the fat person receives on a daily basis is impossible to count, and this list can go on for a few more pages. So what are the consequences of this? Normally they start small and increase over time, they start with feelings of insecurity, maybe occasional sadness and then they provoke feelings of being different, abnormal, of not belonging, of shame, of being powerless and many more.

Microaggressions are influencing both mental and physical health, and their impact is correlated with the intensity of the microaggressions and the existence of minimising factors. Most probably one or two microaggression incidents will not bring any harm, the person might not even notice them, or if they do, they might take it as an isolated incident and not make a deal out of it. Microaggressions are harmful when they are frequent and constant since they provoke permanent stress, and there are tons of studies about the consequences of long-term stress, which leads to depression, guilt, anger and a number of physical illnesses, which can even lead to death.

The stress that microaggressions provoke is increasing due to the ambiguity and the lack of recognition. The victims lack defence strategies due to the fact that microaggressions are not considered illegal; in the same way, they are not able or fear to stand up and react since they are not always 100% sure if what they experienced was a real microaggression, they lack arguments or they are not sure of what the other person really meant, which anyway does not change the fact that the incident provokes stress and negative feelings.

There is a research done in the United States (Salvatore & Shelton, 2007), to test and compare the consequences of visible and invisible racism. Researchers took 4 four different groups, two composed of white Americans and two of black Americans and showed them the company´s hiring decisions some people were exposed to explicitly racist content, and others to messages with hidden racist messages. After the exposure all the people were submitted to ¨Stroop test¨, a measure of cognitive and mental effort functioning.

The results showed that white people were much more affected by the explicit racism, and among black people their capacity of problem-solving decreased much more among these who witnessed examples of invisible racism. Researchers believe that black people developed a coping strategy to deal with racism, but the invisible racism, due to its ambiguity is ‘draining psychological energy or detracting from the task at hand.’

Scientists came up with the interpretation that the groups of black people are already used to the racist incidents, they are not influenced by them that strongly, but what is provoking more stress is rather waiting for the racist incident to occur, being permanently altered, and the ambiguity of whether a situation was a racist incident or not.

Factors minimalising the consequences

Not every person will have similar reactions and will experience the same consequences after the same incident, since there are different factors that can minimise the effects, such as identity development level, social and family support, level of empowerment, tolls that the person has to deal with the stress and racial incidents, the level of understanding of how microaggressions work, etc. It is important to understand what the factors are, since that influences what we can do as youth workers to actually offer the response to youngsters: that is to say, how to deal with microaggressions.

So, what can we do? On the one hand, empowering marginalised groups, offering social support, not being silent bystanders when we witness a racist incident; and on the another hand, we should work on the visibility of the different types of microaggressions and the consequences that they can produce.

References:

Bonino, L. 1998. Micromachismos: la violencia invisible en la pareja [online] http://www.joaquimmontaner.net/Saco/dipity_mens/micromachismos_0.pdf

Salvatore, J. and Shelton, N. 2007. Cognitive Costs of Exposure to Racial Prejudice in Psychological Science [online] https://equity.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Salvatore-Shelton-2007.pdf

Sue, D. W. 2010. Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation. Wiley, New Jersey

Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M. et al. 2007. Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice in American Psychologist, 62(4): 271–286.

Racism and power

In the 1970s the US academic circles studying racial relations and racism suggested a very simple formula to explain racism: Racism = Prejudice + Power. This equation has been contested since then by some, but what this idea rightfully does is to put power in the conversation about racism.

What does it mean? It means that it is not enough to have a bias against someone, but it is also important to explore what the power relations between the groups are you both come from. This is extremely valuable, as it also allows to look at racism not just as an occurrence in the interpersonal encounters between two people, but to unravel it as a structural problem that is omnipresent in our societies.

What is power?

To put it simply, power is the capacity to make rules in our environment and make decisions, including those about how resources are distributed and who can have access to them. To quote civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, “Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change…”. In his words we see that one needs to have power to not only shape how our society works, but also to change it when we have evidence that it is not fair or just.

On societal level power has different dimensions:

Political power in representative democracies would determine who has the capacity (e.g. enough members of parliament) to pass a law. The theory of representative democracy implies that the representative body (e.g. parliament, city council) will mirror the representation of society. Alas, this is very rarely true. Racial and ethnic minorities are largely underrepresented in decision-making bodies across the world, regardless of what percentage of the population they take. As a rule, women which naturally represent more than 50% of every given country population, are widely unrepresented in power structures: as of 2019 in only two countries of the world female members of parliament are a greater number than men. LGBTI people also struggle to make fair representation even if some breakthroughs have been recently made (e.g. as of 2020 openly gay prime ministers serve in Ireland, Luxemburg, Serbia). However, even if collective decision-making bodies fairly represented the diversity of the population they are bound to represent, this still leaves minority with limited access to power. Let us imagine that there is an ethnic minority population that makes 30% of the population of a given country: even if fairly represented in this country’s parliament (around 30%), this will still make them unable to pass legislation without being backed up by the majority. In democracy, majorities matter significantly. They hold the power. What needs to be added to this conversation is that humans tend to favour their own groups, i.e. majorities will tend to create rules, which defend their own interest. For example, for decades in some parts of the United States “the one drop rule” was applied: it is the rule according to which “one drop of Black blood” makes you black, thus children and grandchildren of mixed intercourses (voluntary or forced) will be considered Black. During the periods of slavery this rule had a very clear economical dimension: it enlarged the slave population, thus defending the interest of white slaveowners.

Institutional power is strictly connected to political power as broadly speaking, institutions are the one that enforce policies and put them in practice. Nevertheless, people working in public institutions are usually not elected and include experts, professionals, technicians. Yet, in the decisions they make, the procedures and rules they put forward, they have the ability to shape big part of the social reality. Let us take for example public education: while politicians decide on the big questions on the structure, direction, funding and principles of education, it is institutions who would shape how this comes to happen and influence the people. This would be the task of ministries or departments of education, regional educational authorities, municipal and county inspectorates and finally schools themselves. The decisions these institutions make have a direct impact on how education turns out to be: including school curriculum, school safety, drop-out rates, achievement rates, segregation, etc. Broadly speaking, non-public actors like businesses and non-governmental organizations also act as institutions and have their role in shaping the environment we live in. Being employers and public providers, institutions are the ones that have the power to sustain inclusive environment, or on the opposite, to perpetuate acts of discrimination and hostile environment in their recruitment policies, working culture and services provision. As with elected representatives, institutions tend to serve the interest of the majority and as a result, interests of minorities remain underrepresented.  For example, in education that can mean insufficient resources (in funding, expertise and specific measures) for schools in poor and/or minority neighbourhoods along with stark underrepresentation of minority groups in the school curriculum. Numerous studies have found that the content of the textbooks either does not give fair representation to minority communities, or even reinforces harmful stereotypes, nationalistic and chauvinistic ideas, patriarchal and heteronormative values. This also shapes social narratives which leads us to the power to define culture.

Cultural power can be a very contested concept, but in general terms it would represent the ability of a group to influence the culture they live in. What culture is and how one is created is an extremely complicated question, which we will not get into, but for the purpose of understanding it in relation to racism, we can define culture as “the set of rules, habits, customs, ideas and behaviours in a given community”. The social groups who have political and economic power, usually also have the capability to make or redefine the rules a society follows and the ideas that are shared within it. The full control in the field of culture was described as’ cultural hegemony’ by the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci. According to him, cultural hegemony would be in place when one class or other social group has control over all channels for influence and information (schools, media, religious institutions, etc.) and a different perspective cannot be heard anywhere. If we take this logic on racial, ethnic or sexual minorities, we will see that the majority has the power to shape what the socially shared perception about itself is and also the narrative and image on minorities. Apart from media, education and institutional policy, this can be also done with the use of symbols, e.g. which celebrations are observed, which historical figures and events are given importance to, what is exhibited (or not) in museums, flags, music, etc. Popular culture also plays an important role in this process. Among other things, culture also determines what we – as a society – consider normal and acceptable. This is also why the specific cultural situation will define the line between visible and invisible racism.

Power and privilege

The topic of power on social level is important in order to understand the scope of racism in our societies and have a more complex view that racist manifestations, – big or small, – come from a bigger picture of structural and unequal access to power itself. However, this social view on power can also seem a bit abstract and thus, more difficult to understand, especially when working with young people who are still exploring how society works. Furthermore, many young people cannot relate with the idea of belonging to a group that holds power, since they might feel powerless in their everyday lives. This is understandable because many young people are limited in their possibilities to participate in social and civil life (e.g. because of age restrictions on voting, running for office, etc.). That is why it is important to “translate” how power distribution on social level influences every day and interpersonal situations. This can be done by the concept of privilege.

Annually, global media make news about the strength of passports of different countries, based on indexes that measure the freedom and possibility for mobility that the possessor of such passport holds. This is a perfect example of how nationality, – as a characteristic relevant for all people, – defines difference in opportunities. It has a very simple implication for the privilege that people have in comparison to others, who have reduced possibilities for travelling. Now let us imagine that skin colour, ethnic background, gender, gender identity or sexual orientation can also work as passports – they would allow you to do certain things more easily than others. Let us take a couple of examples:

- Because of my skin colour, I am not afraid I will be verbally or physically harassed walking down the street;

- Because of my skin colour or ethnic background I do not expect to face difficulties when trying to rent a flat;

- Because of my skin colour or ethnic background I am not afraid that the things I say will be taken to represent the position of the whole group;

- Because of my skin colour or ethnic background I am confident I will get serviced in a bar, restaurant or shop;

- Because of my skin colour or ethnic background I don’t do not think that I create a bad name for a group if I have bad results at a test – these results concern only me;

- Because of my skin colour or ethnic background I don’t do not presume a police officer or a judge would have a strong bias against me;

- I do not fear that I will have difficulties making friends at school because of my skin colour or ethnic background;

- Because of my gender I am not afraid employers will not hire me because of the possibility to soon have children;

- Because of my gender I am not afraid that I will be considered too emotional or too mean at my workplace;

- Because of my gender I do not fear being harassed or raped walking down the streets;

- Because of my sexual orientation I am not afraid of holding my partner’s hand in public;

- Because of my sexual orientation, I am not trying to use gender-neutral words and pronouns for my partners so as not to disclose their gender;

- When I watch the media I can see my group well represented in the news and stories;

These are just some examples of white privilege, male privilege and straight privilege. They are a few from hundreds if not thousands of everyday situations which people, belonging to the majority, do not consider at all, because they represent problems they do not actually face. Their “passport” is more powerful than the one of people from minority groups as it allows them to navigate through the borders of everyday life more easily, which they often do not even know exist.

It is important to explore the question of privilege when we work with young people, especially from the majority, as it is otherwise not possible to explore racism and invisible racism in its full complexity. Nevertheless, the point is not to create a feeling of guilt, as belonging to a majority group in power is usually not a question of choice. However, recognizing that we have a privilege and that we benefit from it and the system that creates it, is an important starting point for any conversation aiming at dismantling racism.

Why dealing with power when working on racism with young people?

Including power in the equation of racism makes the learning processes with young people more complicated and more challenging. It is however important because otherwise they will fail to comprehend the scope of racism and thus their role in fighting against it. If we skip introducing the concept of power, we risk to send the message that racism only equals prejudice (racism = prejudice). This will not do justice to the structurally unequal footing on which prejudice is being created and perpetuated. In this case, we also risk to imply that being colour-blind will solve the issue of racism. We have seen many youth actions, which call for “not seeing colour” and unsurprisingly, they have not challenged in-depth the question of racism and other forms of oppression. Being colour-blind means remaining blind to the unequal distribution of power between minorities and majority which translates to unequal opportunities. We cannot and should not remain blind to the personal experiences of people from minorities with racism, which the colour-blind approach inevitably shuts down. Taking an anti-racist stance means opposing racism in its relation to power.

Racism and emotions

In most literature racism is related to knowledge, norms and power. It is undoubtedly that, while counteracting racism, we should know what it is, what the norms at international and local level supporting antiracist narratives and actions are, and what the power relations in action in the specific situation are. We should also remember the formula analysed in the chapter about racism and power, that defines racism as = prejudice + power, pointing out that racism is a structural phenomenon in all our societies.

But, is it enough to analyse a complex phenomenon such as racism and to counteract it?

We do believe that it is essential to consider also the links between emotions and racism in order to have a clearer picture of the phenomenon and to be able to identify better roots and consequences of racial discrimination actions.

Especially when counteracting racism, we need to be aware of the fact that this phenomenon is engaging not only our thoughts and reasonings but also our conscious or unconscious emotions as individuals and as persons belonging to a group.

As Janine Young Kim says, in “Racial emotions and the feeling of equality” emotion is often taken to be irrational and unruly, and therefore counterproductive to serious discussion. Indeed, one might venture to suggest that the emotionality of race is at least part of the reason why people avoid talking about it. In light of such constraints, discourses in the public sphere about pressing values such as equality are likely to become abstract and detached, driving the more particular, emotionally charged idea of racial equality into private realms or, worse, oblivion. Perhaps confronting the emotions of race will not only be good for the psyche but may also help to revitalize the public discourse on racial equality.

Moreover, as Paula Ioanide says in “The emotional politics of racism”: Emotions shape the ways that people experience their worlds and interactions. They give people’s psychic realities and ideological convictions (however fictional or unfounded) their sense of realness. Emotions cinch or unravel people’s sense of individual and group identity. They help motivate actions and inactions, often in unconscious or preconsciously reflexive ways. Although they may seem fleeting and incalculable, emotions attached to race, and sexuality have their own unique logics of gain and loss. Thus, emotions function much like economies; they have mechanisms of circulation, accumulation, expression, and exchange that give them social currency, cultural legibility, and political power.

How can we define emotions?

According to the book "Discovering Psychology," "An emotion is a complex psychological state that involves three distinct components: a subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioural or expressive response."

In addition to understanding exactly what emotions are, researchers have also tried to identify and classify the different types of emotions. For example, in 1972, psychologist Paul Eckman suggested that there are six basic emotions that are universal throughout human cultures: fear, disgust, anger, surprise, happiness, and sadness. Later on, he expanded this list including several other basic emotions such as embarrassment, excitement, contempt, shame, pride, satisfaction, and amusement.

Martha C. Nussbaum defines emotions as not just the fuel that powers the psychological mechanism of a reasoning creature, but as parts, highly complex and messy parts, of this creature’s reasoning itself.

Racial emotions often begin to be acquired in childhood as children begin to acquire racial knowledge and experience racial power. But racial emotions are not only feelings generated within an individual, they are also social, as, when they emerge, they permeate spaces and people around them.

What emotions are strongly linked with racism?

Diversity is very often equal to the unknown and this may be not pleasant, but scary, generating negative emotions and feelings, such as anxiety and the sense of insecurity due to the questioning of one’s identity and existence. Moreover, human beings have the need for membership in a group. To reassure their role in the group and their own membership, they may identify the “different from themselves” as an outsider, as an enemy to their social relationship. The fear of the “outsider” may lead to attack and fight everyone that is different from the self, to consolidate their own membership in a group or community, and consequently reconfirming their own identity and existence, their own role and power.

Attitudes of extreme hatred are usually based on fear. They come from primitive survival mechanisms—our instinct to avoid danger—to fear anything that seems to be different. When people unconsciously feel fear in response to diversity, as psychologist and political advisor Renée Carr says, “they fear that their level of security, importance, or control is being threatened. Often, they will create exaggerated and negative beliefs about others to justify their discriminatory actions in order to secure their own safety and survival”.

Discrimination and racial discrimination, especially when acted out on a daily basis, have consequences on the physical and mental health of those who suffer it. The emotions they feel vary from sadness and fear to anger. Usually their behaviours can be characterised by anxiety, depression, traumatic reactions, and real psychosis. Fortunately, not all those who undergo discriminatory actions and behaviours develop psychiatric illness, nevertheless they suffer, and they need to activate a coping strategy to face this stressful situation. Coping[3] means active management of the emotions or effective response or even ability to solve problems. It allows people to identify strategies to cope with stressful situations.

To be able to cope with stressful situations such as suffering from racial discrimination, people need to be aware of their own emotions (and especially the negative ones deriving from a situation of oppression) and decide how to use them strategically in order to overcome the situation.

To do that and not to suffer from psychosis or even respond to the oppression and violence with more violence and oppression, people should be emotionally competent, caring not only about their positive emotions, but also about their negative ones. It is important to be ready to question the emotions we feel and their roots. When we are angry because of being laid off from our job, is that anger solely related to this event or is it rooted in previous experiences? For instance, did you observe this reaction for a similar problem in your family members when you were a child? Or are you angry because you lack self-esteem and you feel worthless?

The ability to question our emotions leads us to understand better our roots and who we are. Knowing better who we are, the emotions we feel and the behaviours we put in place in specific situations, support us in identifying possible strategies to cope with stressful situations such as racial discrimination.

Through neuroscience, today we have reached a degree of awareness about the functioning of our brain so that we can tackle the problem of racism very closely. We can even imagine how to intervene to mitigate as much as possible the negative emotions generated from what is "different from us". Elizabeth Phelps, neuroscientist of New York University and protagonist of the Conference the Neuroscience of racism, says: "There are two ways in which we manifest our attitudes towards those who are different from us. An explicit, the one we openly declare, and the so-called implicit, where we unconsciously rely on stereotypes even though we believe to behave in a fair way.” The researcher argues that the ways in which we perceive some of the differences related to ethnicity or belonging to different groups are implicit and very often out of our control.

Phelps has shown that "there are brain circuits directly involved in approaches towards people who are part of a different ethnic group and the study of these circuits could prove to be a new and extremely fertile field of investigation for the understanding of social dynamics."

The circuits to which Phelps refers are those connected to the amygdala, a part of the brain known to be involved in the management of emotions and of fear.

Neuroscience can therefore play a decisive role in revealing the foundations of racist attitudes and behaviours.

A neuroscience study conducted in the United States during 2012 recorded evidence that gives an important contribution to a better understanding of the way in which we pose ourselves and relate to others.

The study, conducted by Jennifer T. Kubota, Mahzarin R. Banaji and Elizabeth A. Phelps, researchers at Harvard and New York University, showed how even for a fraction of a second our brain has a reaction of distrust at the sight of the "stranger". During the experiment, white people had to observe an image of a black man. In each of them the amygdala was activated as if it was perceiving a source of fear or disgust. These emotions were lasting only an infinitesimal fraction of a second, as other areas of the brain were activated to neutralize the initial negative emotion. This study showed a dialectic in our minds between negative emotional reactions and judgment and thoughtful decision-making.

More recently, the cerebral cortex has developed a more complex structure that has the role of regulating emotions and is sensitive to education, new information and reasoning. Thanks to this area of the nervous system we are able to evaluate rationally, to express decisions and reasoning, but, in spite of this, instinct reactions can always be in place.

It is important to be aware that during our life, negative and positive emotions, instinctive reactions and reflections live together. In all our lives, depending on the situation or the context, we will use alternatively our negative emotions or our reflective ability. It is essential to be aware of it and of the role that emotions play in guiding our lives, for better or for worse, and influencing our rational choices, if we want to be able to use our emotional intelligence to counteract racism and any other form of intolerance.

Why it is so important to address emotions while working on racism with young people?

While working with young people on racism and anti-racism, it is essential to work also on the emotions because:

You need to name emotions if you want to use them: Being aware of our emotions is not enough! In order to use them, it is important to know them, to name them and to express them properly. How many times, in the debriefing of a role-play, when asking participants “How are you? How do you feel?” the answer is I feel good, bad or even more often normal? It demonstrates how little we are trained to recognize our emotions and to express them freely, as our societies and institutions do not take them so seriously.

You cannot counteract racism if you are not aware of your inner racism. Being aware of our conscious and unconscious biases and of the emotions related to them is essential to start getting to know ourselves and the others better. To know who we are, with our negative and positive emotions, helps us in recognising the “others” as human beings using empathy as a competence to establish dialogue.

You can fight against oppressive mechanisms, if you know how to cope with stressful situations: Being aware of our own emotions and of the functioning of our brains, supports us while activating effective strategies in coping with stressful situations such as those provoked by racist behaviours and other intolerant forms of expression.

You can run educational activities about racism and anti-racism, if you are able to suspend your judgement and to analyse the facts, the power relations in action, the emotions people feel. To deal with racism and anti-racism requires educators to be able to adopt a holistic approach where the cognitive and the emotional levels support the actions.

You can build a counternarrative if you are able to see the complexity of racism as a phenomenon that engages our thoughts, our behaviours and our emotions in the community where we live and act.

And for you, is it important to address emotions while dealing with racism and invisible racism?

Good Treatment

In this part we will present the approach of using good treatment in education as one of the necessary and essential mechanism for fighting against (in)visible racism.

It may seem unnecessary for some to talk about it since it is obvious: we all understand that we have to treat each other well, and that this is a skill that we have learned from a very young age. But that is not the case.

Knowing that we are individuals who grow up and learn in a given society, we should analyse the kind of message we get from our environment on a daily basis: the TV news and advertisements, movies, music, sports based on competition, etc.

We would see that many of these messages are based on the model of normalization of violence: TV programmes uncritically show verbal violence and bad treatment, crimes and murders, etc. Children in peacetime play war games with toys such as guns and rifles. In this way abuse, harm and violence are so normalized that very often, unless it is very visible and brutal, we do not recognize them. The humiliation, the anger and the insults may seem like a normal way of living in a family, in a couple, or at work.

It is difficult to get out of this model, since, although we criticize and reject it in theory, we internalize it in our values and behaviours. For example, the way we solve conflicts: we reproduce models that place us in a spiral of violence and bad treatment. When someone says or does something that makes us angry, we suffer. We tend to make them suffer in response.

An example from the STAR project: young people we interviewed within the research in Spain showed a high degree of knowledge about good treatment: they relate it to emotions of love, care of people, physical closeness, etc. Meaning: we should not laugh at people, we should not insult anybody, accept everybody as they are... However, the majority of them confirmed that they had recently made fun of a person, or ignored a person, insulted somebody or judged a person without knowing her/him.

Secondly, what we also found out in the research is that young people lack emotional security and self-esteem, when they feel they do not fulfil the expectations from society: young people mentioned the examples of not having money, not being beautiful or smart enough or if they were born in a different country of origin (not in Spain). In these cases, they felt they do not have the same opportunities in life, suffer violence more frequently and think that other peers or even adults do not believe in them. As a consequence, they tend to reproduce mistreatment towards themselves as well.

Using good treatment in our workplace and promoting it on a larger scale offers a changing behaviour alternative to individuals and to groups of people, allowing them to practice and learn how to build respectful relationships, based on equality, with themselves and with the others. It is because only practice will allow them to understand good treatment in an integrated way and not only on an intellectual level.

When we try to explain what good treatment is, we like to use the definition of the psychotherapist Fina Sanz Ramon, a specialist in sexology and pedagogy, who defines good treatment as “a form of expression of respect and love that we deserve and that we can manifest in our environment, as a desire to live in peace, harmony, balance, to develop in health, well-being and enjoyment”. Since the basis of good treatment is building relationships that are NOT based on the structure of power, we consequently contribute to the elimination of one of the biggest causes of (invisible) racism which is:  me, holding whatever power I think I have (political, physical, cultural, intellectual, etc), and use it against those who I THINK, I BELIEVE, I LEARNED that do not have it.

Good treatment is the opposite of bad treatment/mistreatment and it can as well occur on three different levels: personal, relational and societal. Using the approach of good treatment in education with young people means focusing on these three levels.

To promote good treatment on a personal level, we would use activities that enable young people to develop values and attitudes such as self-awareness, self-esteem, self-acceptance, emotional awareness, self-criticism, autonomy, etc. We would, for example, encourage them to reflect and tell others about their strengths and things they admire in themselves (which at the beginning is always awkward and difficult, since the majority of them are not used to doing that). We would as well ask others to tell qualities they admire in other people (we can do this in a big variety of forms: writing it on paper or on balloons and putting some dancing music to create a good atmosphere; or making a good treatment corridor and telling each person what the group likes about him/her, etc.). We can, as well, go further and propose good treatment tasks for outside the learning room: each person would take some time to reflect on what makes him/her happy and then do it within the next couple of days. In this way, young people learn how to take care of themselves better: they listen to their bodies, sensations, emotions, and thoughts. They make a personal commitment to their well-being and they feel they are able to choose what is good for them among many options they have.

For practicing good treatment on relational level we are focusing on non-violent communication skills and attitudes such as empathy, appreciation for diversity and respect. The activities we use allow young people to learn about reaching common agreements with others and to negotiate while communicating their own needs and emotions. They, as well, practice active listening. In this process young people develop empathy and communication skills based on respect and non-violence. In addition, they improve their ability of taking care of each other and learn about the things that are not negotiable for themselves and for the others (for example, a peer insulting you is something unacceptable and not negotiable). In other words, it is about learning to put our own limits and communicate it to others.

One of the activities that was used within the STAR project and worked really well is performance or theatre (you can see it in the tools section of this manual). Using theatre can be a powerful and interactive tool to transform violent situations into situations based on equality and respect and where there is no abuse of power. The facilitators or the students themselves represent a story which is close to the students' reality and where there is a display of racism (visible/invisible). The students themselves have to propose different solutions to the problem. This exercise allows young people to better empathise with victims of racism and, on the other hand, learn about different strategies of action in violent situations, when they are victims or bystanders.

What worked well within the project were also the so called “good treatment challenges”. We proposed to two or three persons from the group to take care of the rest of the group during one day. The challenges were enjoyable and easy to carry out. The next day or week, the group of people who took care of others changed and the challenge was completed when all persons, at least once, were caregivers. The aim of this activity was to make the caregivers aware of the good feelings they were producing in others and to realise that they were responsible for the happiness of other people.  In this way the group was responsibly and consciously building mutual appreciation and care for their well-being.

Young people were shown how good treatment generates good treatment. When this is integrated in the group, it can be extended in daily life, being applied in a family, in an intimate relationship, etc.

The good treatment on social level means changing the structure of power relations into relations of equality, where young people develop values such as collaboration, solidarity, empathy, negotiation, coexistence and respect for diversity. It means listening and including rather than criticizing and excluding.

In order to promote good treatment at the level of the group we work with, we can start with activities that foster the cohesion among the members of the group, to increase the motivation of getting to know each other better and increasing the trust they have in each other. There are many energizers and simple games where young people simply have fun and group building activities where they work together to solve proposed challenges and find common solutions.

One of the activities we always do when working with a group is proposing the participants to draw up a good treatment contract: young people share the values that need to be respected by the group or the things that need to be done or not, so that everybody can be fully included and feel well. In this way, the group learns how to collaborate and negotiate with each other, and moreover, to accept and understand the differences that exist among group members and how to deal with them on the basis of respect.

Before getting to this point it is really important that all the group members feel safe to communicate their own needs and moreover, feel motivated to be part of the decision-making process of the group, knowing that their voice will be heard and will be taken into consideration. For that reason, all previous trust building activities are very important, as well as building up self-confidence, communication skills, etc., meaning that we need to work on the three levels to be able to make a changing point within our small society: the group.

Here we must as well point out that it is very important, while dealing with good treatment on all levels, not to forget the online sphere and the relationships young people have with others on social media.

Finally, one of the main objectives of our educational process is that young people become agents of change and multipliers of their learning experience, creating actions that go beyond the classroom.  We can motivate them to take action in their environments and raise awareness on the impact of good treatment. How? In the article Community work you can learn about how to support young people in organizing actions for and with the Community.

References:

Sanz Ramón, Fina. (2016): El buentrato como proyecto de vida Kairos, Barcelona.

Bingo

Summary: Bingo is a tool which helps participants to talk to each other and get energized while reflecting on various issues around racism and invisible racism.

Topics:

Materials: bingo sheets (annexed), pens/pencils

Procedure

1. Distribute the bingo sheets among the participants (one sheet per participant) and explain the rules of the activity.

2. The Bingo sheet includes 12 questions. Each participant needs to find a person in the group to answer one question. They should walk around the room and talk with others to do that. When they have the answer, they should write it down in the relevant box, alongside the name of the person they were talking to.

3. Invite the participants to stand up, start moving and carry out their task. You can play some music.

4. The activity finishes when enough people manage to fill in all the fields and say BINGO out loud. If you are short of time, you can stop the activity with the first person who has a full bingo; if there is enough time, you can allow everybody to finish the activity.

Debriefing questions

- Which questions were easier to find answers for and why?

- Which questions were more difficult to find answers for and why?

- What were new words/terms/concepts that you found in the sheet and how do you understand them?

- Did you find something surprising in your peers’ answers? If so, what?

- What was the most important thing you learned?

Attachments

Name a singer of colour that you like

Give an example of racism. How do you understand it?

Give one example of a situation when you felt powerless

Name a famous person who belongs to more than one minority/disadvantaged group.

Where did you witness hate speech against a minority group?

Name the feeling that you associate with equality

Name one actress of colour

Name a feeling that you associate with the situation of having little or no power.

Tell us one thing you do to cherish diversity

Name a role model for you that comes from a minority group

Name one privilege you have

Name one action that you consider good treatment to someone else

Name one action that you consider good treatment to yourself

Give one example of a situation when you felt powerful

Name a feeling that you associate with racism

Name an example of an antiracist campaign or action you have heard of

Cat and mouse

Summary: In this activity participants explore thoughts and feelings related to being powerful and powerless through putting themselves in the position of a cat and a mouse.

Topics: power relations, emotional awareness

Materials: Text for visualization (annexed); music player (optional)

Procedure

1. Inform participants that you are going to tell them a story, and they just need to follow your voice and imagine the things you are saying or asking. Read the text for visualization (annexed).

2. Take a poster, divide it into two parts with a line and draw a cat on one side and a mouse on the other. Ask participants about all the thoughts, feelings and actions of the cat and the mouse. Write them down in the appropriate part of the poster.

Debriefing questions

- How did you feel as a mouse?

- How did you feel as a cat?

- What did you think when you were the mouse? What did you do?

- In which situation did you feel weak? In which situation did you feel powerful?

- Where would you prefer to live, in a world where cats eat mice? Or where they can live together?

- Who are cats and mice in your local community? Who is in the position of power in society? And who is in the position of submission?

- Why do we like power?

- What are the reasons for the people in submissive positions to be there? And why are those in power positions over there?

- How is power related to racism?

- How can we create a space where power relations do not exist?

Text for the visualization

Breathe. Try to relax your body. Close your eyes. Make yourself feel comfortable.

I imagine I leave my classroom and go out from my school. There is a small road that I have never taken before. I decide to take it now. The small road goes to an old, abandoned house. I am at the door, I open it and I get inside the house. What I find is a very large, dark room. I get to walk around the room and my body starts to shake. I get smaller. I am already the size of a notebook and I am still getting smaller.

I am growing hair all over my body, my teeth are growing, and I realize that I have become a little mouse. How do I feel in the position of a mouse? How do I see the world from this position?

Suddenly, the door of the house opens and a big cat appears and begins to walk around the house. How do I feel? What do I think? The cat suddenly looks at me and starts walking in my direction. It is coming closer and closer. What can I do? How do I feel?

Just when the cat is almost by my side, my body transforms again, I become a cat, and the cat becomes a mouse. How do I feel right now? How do I see the world now when I am a cat? How do I see the mouse?

I decide what I will do with the mouse. Then I go ahead and do it. My body shakes again and begins to regain its form and size. After I have regained my shape and size, I leave the house and I go back to school. I climb the stairs to my class and I sit down...

And gradually we open our eyes.

Diamond

Summary: The Diamond activity helps participants discuss and understand what are the possible consequences of racial microaggressions in a better way.

Topics: invisible racism, stereotypes and prejudices

Materials: Statements and diamond illustration (annexed) for each participant, pens/pencils

Procedure

1. Give participants the set of nine different statements, each of which represents a micro-aggression.

2. Explain that their task is to rank the statements depending on how severe or violent they find them. The ranking should be done in the shape of a diamond, where the least violent statements should be at the bottom and the most violent – at the top (see illustration).

3. Invite participants to do the task individually first, and then in small groups of three to five people each. In this way participants will be able to reflect and create their own opinion first, and then discuss and learn from the others’ points of view.

4. After approximately twenty minutes discussion in small groups, take the diamonds from all the groups and put them in visible places of the meeting room and ask participants to go around and see what the others did.

Debriefing questions

- How do you feel after the activity?

- What were the most debatable points during your groupwork discussion?

- What criteria did you use to make your ranking and decisions?

- Is there such a thing like “a little bit racist”? What does it mean? How do we know if something is a little bit racist or very racist?

- Do you think there is one universally correct ranking? If so, why? If not, why?

- Which of the examples are considered violent in your community? Why?

- Which of the examples do you think should be taken more seriously? Why? Why not?

Statements and illustration

1. “I do not sit next to a Black or Arab person on the bus. In the street, I usually change sides when one of them approaches me”.

2. “I assumed that he did not get proper education and probably works in agriculture fields because he looks like an immigrant”.

3. “When I see someone that does not look native, I usually speak up and use gestures more, because they might not speak the local language”.

4. “As a policeman, I checked the passport of this lady who turned out to be Romanian. I told her she looked more German.

5. “The financial crisis brought upon us a lot of black days in our countries. We are waiting for white days to come back”.

6. “I'm not a racist, but I would never date a black guy because that is not the type of man I like”.

7. “Racist jokes are funny! Don’t you have a sense of humour?”

8. “You always have to be extra careful around Roma people and make sure your wallet is in a safe place”

9. “You are my first gay friend. I have never had gay friends before because you know how they are… But you are not like the rest”.

Four corners, four emotions

Summary: In this activity participants set out on a journey exploring how they are influenced by the emotions of anger, fear, sadness and happiness and how they might be able to handle them. They will also discuss how these are related to racism and the fight against it.

Topics: emotional awareness

Materials: Four pillows; posters; markers; music.

Procedure

1. Divide the room into four spaces where each space represents one emotion (anger, fear, sadness and happiness). At each corner stick a poster with the name of the emotion.

2. Invite participants to a journey in their emotions. At first, ask them to relax in silence, standing or sitting in a circle in the middle of the room. They will close their eyes, take deep breaths, trying to connect with themselves. When you feel the group is ready, start the journey, asking participants to stand up and to follow you in silence.

3. The first emotion they will visit is FEAR: ask them to focus on their fears, here and now, and to think about where they come from.

4. When they are done, again in silence, take them to the second corner/emotion: ANGER. Ask them to reflect what makes them feel angry and invite them to try to get rid of it, maybe by screaming, with body movement or any other way they consider suitable.

5. After that, they will move, in silence, to the third corner/emotion: SADNESS. Ask them to remember situations in which they were sad and why.

6. Once everyone is ready, ask them to move to the last corner/emotion: HAPPINESS. Tell them to think about the things that make them feel happy and smile during their life:  people that made/make them happy; the events that made them joyful. At this stage you can play some happy music that is suitable for dancing. Let them go free and follow the rhythm, let them enjoy.

7. After the entire journey, ask participant to choose one of the four emotions. Then provide each participant with a poster and markers. They are supposed to draw a human silhouette and write: in the head, the thoughts they have in relation to the chosen emotion; in the chest, how they felt; in the hands, the tools they have to manage this emotion; and in the feet, the support they can count on (people, music, books, etc.).

8. Once they have finished their silhouettes, ask them to share and discuss them in pairs or small groups.

Debriefing questions

- How do you feel?

- What were the challenges faced to recall your emotions and the situations connected to them? What emotions were easier and what were more difficult and why?

- What are the links between emotions and everyday life?

- What tools do we have to understand our emotions and to cope with them?

- What kind of support would we like to have?

- What are the emotions that accompany acts of racism and invisible? Why, in your opinion?

- Is it important to be aware and in control of our emotions when we want to counter racism? If so, why? How can we do that?

To support your participants in expressing their emotions, you may introduce them to the six basic emotions as defined by Paul Eckman.

Good Deed Mailbox

Summary: This activity runs in parallel with longer learning processes. It invites participants to make gestures of good treatment among themselves and explore the feelings around it.

Topics: good treatment

Materials: A box, paper, pencils/pens

Procedure

1. Distribute paper cards among the participants and ask them to come up with tasks that represent good treatment and write them down. (e.g. “Tell a friend what you appreciate about them” or “Go to someone you usually do not speak much with and ask them how their day is going”).

2. Collect all papers and put them together in a box – preferably decorated in a nice way. Place the box in the learning room, somewhere easily accessible for participants. Instruct the participants to frequently pass by the box (e.g. during breaks), pick a paper and implement the good deed task they have picked.

3. Make sure you remind the participants from time to time of the box and the activity. Depending on the duration of the learning process, you can encourage them to do it once per day or a couple of times per day.

5. At the end of the learning process, make sure to take time and discuss the activity with the participants, following the proposed debriefing questions.

Debriefing questions

- How do you feel about the activity?

- Was it easy to perform the task? What were the easy and the more difficult tasks? Why?

- How did you feel after performing a task that represents good treatment for someone else?

- How did you feel after someone else treated you well?

- How can we continue making gestures of good treatment in the group and beyond?

Good Deed Online

Summary: This activity invites participants to practice good treatment online through posting on social media and tagging friends.

Topics: good treatment

Materials: Access to devices and internet

Procedure

1. Ask participants what social media platforms they normally use and what treatment they usually receive there. Ask them to give examples of when they were treated both positively and negatively online.

2. Explain the participants they are offered a challenge: they need to make a publication or story on a social media of their choice (e.g. Instagram), which includes a nice message. The publication should be complimenting other participants in the group, who should be tagged. Encourage participants to include people they normally talk less to. You can also include a hashtag (e.g. #goodtreatment or something else you can come up with together with the participants).

3. You can either allow time for this activity immediately or depending on the length of your learning process, you can give a longer time. You can repeat it (e.g. on a daily basis).

4. At the end of the learning process, make sure to take time and discuss the activity with the participants, following the proposed debriefing questions.

Debriefing questions

- How did you feel when you posted something nice for others? And how about when others posted something nice about you?

- Does it take much effort to perform gestures of good treatment online? Why don’t we do them more often?

- Do you think the activity sends a message to your friends/followers on social media? If so, what message?

- How can we continue making gestures of good treatment in the group and beyond?

Good Treatment

Summary: In this activity participants understand through experience why it is important to treat others the way we would like to be treated and reflect on what makes them feel good.

Topics: good treatment; power relations

Materials: Paper, pens/pencils, markers

Procedure

PART ONE

1. Divide participants in small groups and ask each group to come up with a task for another group – something they should perform or do – to make everyone laugh and help energise the group. Give them time to come up with a task.

2. Ask each group to present their task, but no one should start implementing the task at this point. Normally, the tasks would be somewhat humiliating or make participants feel somewhat uncomfortable.

3. Tell the participants that you have forgotten to mention one important condition of the activity: each group will have to perform the task they have come up with within their group. Invite them to do it.

4. After the tasks have been performed, you can invite participants to reflect or move on to the second part and make a combined reflection at the end.

PART TWO

1. Invite participants to make themselves comfortable, close their eyes and think of a recent moment when they felt happy: celebrating an achievement, doing something or being with someone that makes them happy, etc. Ask them to recreate this moment in their mind: where they were, with whom, what they did, what they felt, remembering smells, sounds around them, etc.

2. Having allowed enough time for remembering and reliving, ask participants to open their eyes and form pairs. Each participant of the pairs can use the body of their peer as clay and build a statue that would represent the situation or feeling they thought about in the first step.

3. Make a round and ask each participant to show and explain their statue.

Debriefing questions

- How do you feel?

- In the first part of the activity, how did you feel when another group was imposing a decision on what you need to do? How does this relate with the topic of power?

- Can you think of real-life examples when humiliating decisions are imposed to certain people or groups of people?

- How did you feel when the rules changed and you had to perform your own tasks?

- Would you have come up with a different task if you had known that you yourself had to do it? If so, how different and why?

- Why is it easier to humiliate others instead of us?

- What is the general conclusion of the first part of the activity?

- What is the difference in the feeling that the first part and the second part of the activity brought up in you? How do you explain it?

- Which part of the activity represents ‘good treatment’? How do you understand ‘good treatment’?

- Why is it important to know what makes us feel good? How does it relate to our relationships to others?

- How can we use the concept of good treatment to fight racism and invisible racism?

How far would you go?

Summary: Participants explore racist microaggressions through the story of a Somali refugee Ahmed. They need to identify microaggressions throughout the story and express this by taking steps.

Topics: invisible racism, stereotypes and prejudices

Materials: Text to read: the story of Ahmed (annexed)

Procedure

1. Prepare enough empty space and ask participants to form a long line, standing next to each other shoulder to shoulder.

2. Explain to the participants that you are going to read a story, which is broken down into 17 parts. After each part, they will need to decide if the described situation in the current part represents a form of racism. If they think so, they need to make a step forward. If not, stay in the same place.

3. Ask the participants to close their eyes, so they do not get influenced by the movement of the others. Start reading the story of Ahmed. Repeat each part at least once and give time for participants to decide whether or not to move forward. Make sure they understand when each part of the story is over and a new one begins. Considering the participants are moving with their eyes closed, observe safety.

4. After the end of the story invite participants to open their eyes, look around the space and note where they are situated in comparison with the others. You can take a couple of first-hand comments. Then invite participants to sit down in a circle for debriefing.

Debriefing questions:

- How do you feel?

- How do you feel about the fact that different people positioned themselves differently throughout the story? Why do you think that happened?

- What were the most difficult situations in which you had to make a decision and why?

- Let us look for microaggressions in this story: are you able to identify at least 5 of them?

- What were the microaggressions that made you feel very uncomfortable and why?

- How would you define a racial microaggression?

- Which of the microaggressions are based on stereotypes? What are these stereotypes?

- What are the elements which contributed to the full exclusion of Ahmed at the end of the story?

- Are different microaggression influencing Ahmed only individually or also as a combination? How do you think this changes the impact on Ahmed?

- When is the right moment to react when we identify a microaggression? How can we react?

- Have you experienced similar situations in real life? What were they? Did you react and how?

- Why is it sometimes more difficult to react to racist acts and words done and said by people in our close circle? What are the best strategies to react?

Annex: The Story of Ahmed

1

It is the beginning of the school year, and there is a new face in the classroom. The teacher introduces Ahmed, who just says ‘hi’ to the class and sits alone on one of the empty desks. The class welcomes him to the group.

2

During the first break you and a few of your friends approach Ahmed to get to know him. One of your friends asks loudly “Do you speak our language?”, making a lot of gestures with his hands.

3

Ahmed responds with no trace of any accent that he speaks and understands everything perfectly. You start chatting. A friend of yours asks where Ahmed is from and he answers that he is “from here”, as he moved from a nearby city. The answer does not fulfil the curiosity of your group, and someone else asks “But where are you really from?”.

4

Ahmed feels a bit uncomfortable with the question, since he has been living in the country since he was two years old. However, he explains that he is black, which might not fit into the general standard of the society, but he feels local, since he does not know any other reality. Someone from your group responds that he should not worry, “here we are not racists, and there is only one race – the human race!”.

5

Later in the school year, in one of your classes you discuss entrepreneurship and preparing to shine in the labour market. Your teacher asks the class what are the most important factors in order to succeed and get a job. Ana answers that in her opinion the most important thing is to work hard and that everyone can succeed, if they work hard enough.

6

Everyone agrees with the statement, and Emy adds a joke that what will help Ahmed to succeed is originality, because of the way he looks. The whole class laughs, Ahmed included.

7

During the break, Emy approaches Ahmed and acknowledges that they had a lot of fun during the class. She touches his hair and says that she is so fascinated by it. “So exotic”, she says.

8

As time passes, Ahmed gets a nickname in the class: Somi, short from Somali. Your classmates sometimes joke that Somi is quite intelligent for a black person.

9

One day, during math class, the teacher gives the tests back, and says out loud that Ahmed got the highest score. Dan, who is sitting next to him, taps him friendly on the shoulder and says “Congratulations, bro, you are a credit to your race!”.

10

You are with your mom in front of a shop, waiting for your dad. Ahmed sees you and approaches you to say “hi”. In this moment, your mom interrupts him by saying “We do not have money”, assuming that he is approaching to beg.

11

The next day you feel bad about the situation with your mom, and you approach Ahmed to tell him you are sorry. A classmate overhears the conversation and says “But your mom can not be racist. She works with some black people in the factory”.

12

In one of your classes you are given a task to create posters of people who serve as your inspiration. You believe that this can inspire others in the whole school. You did a great job, but somehow no one in the class included anybody who is not white or belongs to another minority.

13

Valentine’s day is approaching and there is a practice in your school to send Valentine messages to others. Your classmate Jane comments: “Let us see who will be the ‘lucky one’ to get the Valentine from Somi. I hope it will not be me, I am not into black guys.”.

14

One day Tino realises that his phone is missing. He is sure that it must have happened in school, probably even in class. Someone approaches Somi and tells him “If you give the phone back, we will not inform the teacher about it.”

15

Ahmed says that it was not him, but no one believes him. As the days go by, classmates interact less and less with him.

16

Ahmed realizes that he is the only one in the class who is not invited to a party. He feels very bad already about the whole situation.

17

One day when Ahmed comes to school he finds a note on his desk that says “Go back to Africa”.

Additional information:

Racial microaggressions are of different types, depending on the situation and the message they convey. To help the discussion with young people, you can explore some of them, which are also included in the story:

- Alien in own land: When people of colour are assumed to be foreign-born

- Ascription of Intelligence: Assigning intelligence to a person of colour on the basis of their race.

- Colour Blindness: Statements that indicate that a white person does not want to acknowledge race

- Criminality: A person of colour is presumed to be dangerous, criminal, or deviant on the basis of their race

- Denial of individual racism: A statement made when whites deny their racial biases

- Myth of meritocracy: Statements which assert that race does not play a role in life successes

- Environmental microaggressions: Macro-level microaggressions, which are more apparent on systemic and environmental levels

The list is adapted from Wing, Capodilupo, Torino, Bucceri, Holder, Nadal, Esquilin (2007). Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Implications for Clinical Practice.

American Psychologist, 62, 4, 271-286

Innocent pictures, innocent words

Summary: Participants analyse authentic anti-Semitic cartoons from Nazi Germany to explore different types of hate speech and how it can harm communities.

Topics: hate speech, stereotypes and prejudices

Materials: printed images (annexed) or computer and projector;

Procedure

The activity consists of two parts - you can do them together during one workshop session or completely separately. Part two is optional.

PART ONE

1. Tell the group you will show them pictures from comic books. Ask them to think about answers to the following questions:

- What country do the pictures come from?

- When were they created (indicative date)?

- Who are they depicting?

- What do you think of them?

2. Show the participants the images (annexed). It is best to display them as a presentation on a wall or screen. Then ask the participants to answer the questions above.

Note: Images can be difficult to understand because they come from a different historical and social context. The aim of this part of the activity is to collect ideas from the participants. You should not judge the accuracy of their statements, but you can ask them to justify their opinion.

3. After this part of the activity, inform the participants that the pictures come from before World War II and were produced in Nazi Germany. These cartoons were used in schools as part of the educational process of children and youth. During social or geography lessons, these comic books were used to encourage young people to take concrete actions against the Jewish population. This propaganda used in the educational process was to show a dehumanized image of the Jew as someone who is not worthy of life. The originator of such an approach was Julius Streicher, who started to publish similar comic books in his newspaper. Then they were transferred to school textbooks. Streicher tried to create an image of the Jew as a subhuman, who is a threat to the German nation. The pictures depicted, for example, sexually aroused obese Jews using beautiful and young Aryan women, merciless Jewish homeowners who bully German tenants, dirty Jewish butchers, rich Jews who ignore the economic crisis, handsome and athletic Aryan men and fat and scruffy Jewish men. In one of the textbooks where the cartoons were placed, three examples of actions to be taken were given: throw Jewish children out of school, forbid Jews to use public places (such as parks), throw them out of the country. Such propaganda proved effective and was part of the process that led to the extermination of the Jewish population.

4. Invite the participants to discuss, using the debriefing questions provided below.

PART TWO (optional)

1. Ask the participants if they have encountered pictures, comics or writings on public spaces that offend people because of who they are, e.g. they are representatives of different minorities, have different views or look different.

2. Choose together a few examples of hate speech (mentioned by the participants) and ask participants to discuss them. You can do it in smaller groups.

3. Finally, ask participants to present their analysis of hate speech examples.

Debriefing questions

PART ONE:

- Why did people in Nazi Germany believe in such or similar propaganda?

- What stereotypes about Jews were perpetuated through comic books? What prejudices did they lead to?

- Can images be considered hate speech and why? Would images be more impactful in spreading hate and why?

- Do you know similar examples (of images) from your life experience? Who do they target? What impact do they have on young people?

- What can you do if you see hateful images, e.g. on social media?

PART TWO:

- What stereotypes are represented in the given examples?

- Who are the people affected by the example of hate speech?

- Who is/may be their author (the perpetrator of hate speech)?

- How does it make people feel?

- What do the perpetrators want to achieve?

- Why is this hate speech?

- Is that a crime?

- What can you do about it?

Questions for final debriefing:

- Which elements of the activity were the most difficult for you and why?

- Where do stereotypes and prejudices come from?

- Can pictures or writings on public spaces be dangerous? For whom? How do you think people under attack feel?

- What conditions must be met for the content to be classified as hate speech?

- How can hate speech lead to hate crimes?

- How can you counteract hate speech? What can you do?

Annex: Images

Invisible racism in my life

Summary: Participants explore emotions accompanying situations of racism, reflecting on their own experience through a silent walk in nature.

Topics: emotional awareness, invisible racism

Materials: -

Procedure

1. Ask the participants to form pairs, grouping with a person they would like to walk together with in silence. Once the pairs are formed, start with a walk in nature. Invite participants to stay silent.

2. After a while, ask participants to think about one moment in which they experienced an act of invisible racism (as a perpetrator, as a victim or as bystander). Then continue the walking in silence.

3. When you feel that all participants are ready for the next step, ask participants to think about the emotions they felt when the situation of invisible racism occurred. Continue walking in silence

4. For the last step, ask participants to share their emotions in their pairs and provide details about the situation, as long as they feel comfortable to share. Continue walking and go back to the departure point, where participants can sit and start the debriefing.

Debriefing questions:

- How do you feel?

- Was it easy/difficult to recall a situation of invisible racism in your life and why?

- Can you briefly share some of the cases you recalled?

- Which were the emotions you felt in relation to the situation you were able to recall?

- What are the links between emotions and situations of invisible racism?

- Which are the emotions accompanying racism and invisible racism? Why, in your opinion?

To support your participants in expressing their emotions, you may briefly introduce the six basic emotions as defined by Paul Eckman.

Is this a microaggression?

Summary: The activity consists of analysing different drawings and determining if they represent a microaggression or not, and why.

Topics: invisible racism

Materials: printed sets of drawings (annexed)

Procedure

1. Divide the participants in small groups of max. five people. Each group receives a package of ten different drawings.

2. Explain to the participants that they have to analyse the drawings and turn those in which they see a microaggression upside down.

3. When the groups are ready, ask them to write down on the back of the drawings in which they found a microaggression the explanation for their decision.

4. Present the results of the work of the small groups in plenary and move to debriefing.

Debriefing questions:

- How do you feel?

- Was it easy/difficult to recall a situation of invisible racism in your life and why?

- Can you briefly share some of the cases you recalled?

- Which were the emotions you felt in relation to the situation you were able to recall?

- What are the links between emotions and situations of invisible racism?

- Which are the emotions accompanying racism and invisible racism? Why, in your opinion?

Annex: Drawings by Beatrice Naldi

Musical chairs

Summary: Through playing the popular game musical chairs participants explore the consequences of invisible racism on people who suffer from it.

Topics: invisible racism

Materials: printed and cut set of values, a music player, chairs, posters, markers.

Procedure

1. Explain to the group that they will play the game of musical chairs where participants dance around chairs in a circle until the music stops. At this moment, they have to look for an empty chair and sit down, but as there is always one chair less than the people playing, one person will be left standing.

2. Before starting the game, distribute the printed and cut papers with values among the participants, so that each participant holds one valuable.

3. Start playing the game. Whenever a person is left without a chair, they need to read out loud what the valuable they hold is. The group then needs to decide if there is someone who holds a less important valuable in the group and can switch places. In this case the one who is decided to hold a less important valuable will leave the game, instead of the one left standing.

4. After every round and decision made, remove one chair from the circle.

5. Repeat the activity until about three or four people stay in the circle, e.g. the ones with the most important valuables.

6. Invite everyone to sit down and take pens/pencils and paper. They have to reflect individually on the following question: What would happen if I did not have the valuable I was holding on a piece of paper for one day? And what about one year? three years?

7. Ask participants to share their reflections and then start the debriefing.

Debriefing questions:

- How do you feel? What did you think of the game?

- Was it difficult to decide who stays and who has to leave the circle? Why was it difficult?

- What ensures our access to the valuables/privileges/rights on the paper?

- Does everyone have equal access to these valuables? Which groups of people have better access and which – limited? Why?

- What factors can limit our access to these valuables? Is racism one of these factors? Why?

- What are the consequences of racism – visible and invisible? Can you give examples?

- How can we minimise the harm of racism and its consequences to the people that suffer from it?

- Does everyone who experience racism and invisible racism suffer similar consequences? What other factors are in play?

Annex: Valuables

Home

Food

Mobile phone

Access to a temple

Access to school

Access to university

Friends

Physical safety

Daily allowance (pocket money)

Warm clothes

Right to vote

Driving license

Car

Holiday at the seaside

Access to disco/club

Access to healthcare

Right to travel abroad

Right to move in all parts of the city

Access to transportation

Job

Well-paid job

Possibility to turn to the police

Possibility to express your opinion

Right to fall in love with the person you want

Feeling of belonging

Self-esteem

Feeling that you are appreciated

Ability to read

Ability to write

Financial aid whenever you are sick

Access to the internet

Possibility to learn languages

Possibility to receive new qualifications

Other treatment?

Summary: Participants reflect about hate speech from their own experience. After that, they explore different case studies of hate speech and discuss reactions strategies, including how they can react when the source of hate speech is someone we know.

Topics: hate speech

Materials: posters and markers, pens/pencils, printed tables (annexed), cards with situations (annexed)

Procedure

PART ONE

1. Tell the group that this activity is about hate crimes and hate speech. You can ask participants what 'hate speech' and 'hate crime' means to them. You can write down two terms on the board/poster and ask participants for their understanding of the terms. At the end of this part of the activity, summarise the discussion and give definitions of 'hate crime' and 'hate speech'.

2. Then, tell the participants that you will ask them some questions. If the answer to the question is yes, they should stand up and if the answer is negative, they should stay seated. Ask them to answer according to their own knowledge and experience. The answers should not be consulted with the group. During this part of the activity everyone should keep quiet. The questions:

- Have you encountered hate speech on the Internet?

- Has any of your friends ever become a victim of hate speech?

- Has anyone around you ever been a victim of physical, verbal or psychological violence because of who they are? (e.g. has a different skin colour, is a foreigner, body shape, etc.)

- Have you heard about cases of hate crimes?

- Have you heard of cases of hate crimes from the media?

- Have you ever reacted when you have seen violence against another person?

- Have you ever reacted when you have seen hate speech on the Internet?

- Has a person who has committed violence against another person, because of who they are, been punished?

3. After this part of the activity you can briefly discuss what happened. Ask participants how they felt when answering the questions and what surprised them. Was it difficult for them to answer? Why?

PART TWO

4. Divide the group into several smaller groups (each small group should have between five and ten people). Give each group a sheet of paper with a table (below) and two or three cards with situations.

5. Each group must decide together what they would do in each of the described situations if it concerned a person they know well and if this person was unknown to them. Give the groups about fifteen minutes to do this. Ask them to write the answers in the table. Tell the participants that all people in the group do not have to agree on a common answer; they can give several answers for each situation.

6. Invite the participants to present their results in plenary, particularly their ideas on how to react. After the presentation of each small group, ask the rest of the participants: Do you like the ideas presented? Do you think that the reactions are appropriate to the act? Do you have other ideas? After all presentations, move to debriefing.

Debriefing questions:

- Was it difficult for you to find ideas on how to react in these situations? If so, why?

- Did your ideas overlap or were they very different? Why?

- Did you find examples that are not hate speech or a hate crime according to you? Which ones and why?

- Should our reaction be different in situations where the perpetrator of the act is a person we know and when we do not know the person?

- Have you encountered or heard about similar situations in the media? What was the public reaction then?

- Can ignoring be a form of reaction to such situations? In what cases and why?

- Should you always react in similar situations? Why?

- What human rights are violated in case of hate speech?

- Why are so few hate crimes reported or qualified as hate crimes?

- What can you do to prevent hate speech and hate crimes?

Annex: Table

Annex: Situation cards

The PERSON posts a very offensive joke about black people on Facebook.

The PERSON is laughing in the hallway at a boy who is from Chechnya. He calls him 'dirty' and 'nigger'. He comments on his poor knowledge of language sharply, mimicking his statements.

You are at a party with a group of people. The PERSON is offending the refugees. He/she says they are terrorists and that they should all be in prison. He/she says they came here only to take 'our' jobs and use our welfare system.

The PERSON provides a socio-political analysis of contemporary migration on their blog. The article is full of statements , such as: ‘The reason for contemporary migration is our forced acceptance of multiculturalism. Another faith, especially Islam... threatens us all. We should do everything to prevent immigrants and refugees from settling down in our country. Everything!’

The PERSON beats a guy in the toilets who is rumoured to be gay.

In your class, the PERSON destroyed the backpack of a girl who is Muslim. She was told she should not go to your school  because there is only room for 'real X'. (X is your nationality)

The PERSON took part in a demonstration against the reception of refugees in your country. During the demonstration, a puppet representing a refugee was set on fire.

The PERSON makes fun of people with disabilities at school. He/she says about them: “these cripples should be put in some kind of closed facility, not in a normal school.”

The PERSON posted the following post on their Facebook page: ‘Killing a Muslim is not a sin!’

The PERSON, when visiting a pub, says the following words: ‘These Jews are everywhere. Look at this guy at the bar, look at his nose - surely a Jew.’

The PERSON does not want to subscribe to the German language class. He says that he/she will not learn the Nazi language and that all Germans are pigs.

The PERSON wants to enrol in an organization that openly admits its xenophobic and racist views. It is said that last week members of this organization took part in beating up a foreigner in the city.

Pink triangle

Summary: Participants are invited to group themselves according to shapes and colours. Ultimately someone is left out.

Topics: invisible racism

Materials: several post-its; pink, blue, red and a black marker;

Procedure

1. Before the activity, draw a geometric figure on each post-it: square, circle, rectangle, rhombus, trapeze, etc. depending on the number of participants. Draw a triangle with pink outlines on only one post-it.

2. Stick one post-it on the back of each participant, so that they do not know what the sign assigned to them is. Each participant can only see the symbols that are attached to the back of the other participants.

3. Ask participants to form groups based on similar characteristics. They can decide to form small groups according to similarity of form (e.g. all squares or all circles), or according to the colour (e.g. all reds and all blues). The person with the pink triangle would normally remain alone because their post-it does not belong to any category of colour or similar shape.

4. Give a time of five minutes to group and invite participants to discuss what happened and what the final result is.

Debriefing questions:

- How are you, and how do you feel?

- Are you satisfied with the result and why?

- What was the "grouping" criterion you used? Why did you decide to choose this criterion?

- Was there another way to regroup?

- Can you compare what happened in the activity to real-life experiences? Give examples.

- Who is different?

- How do the processes of inclusion/exclusion happen?

Power and candies

Summary: In this activity participants are invited to distribute resources (candies) and explore to what extent the power to do so can exclude groups and on what criteria.

Topics: invisible racism, power relations

Materials: candies (at least sixty)

Procedure

PART ONE

1. Explain to the participants that you have a surprise for them, but only people born between April and October will get it. Emphasise that you yourself were born in this period and that is how you know that this is the period when the best people were born. Ask participants born in this period to step forward.

2. Give one candy to everyone who stepped forward. Tell the participants that you have more candies left and they can decide how they will be allocated: either for everyone, or between those born between April and October or even between those born in only one or two months (the smaller the group, the more candies each of their members will get).

3. If the group reallocates the candies in a way that some people will have two or more candies, tell them you can give them ten more candies and only people with two candies or more can participate in deciding how they are going to be distributed.

PART TWO

4. Ask participants with candies (or with two or more candies in case everyone has candies) to gather their candies together and form a circle between them to protect them.

5. Ask participants with no candles (or with less than two) how they would try to reach the candies in the protected circle. Encourage them to try. Everyone should observe what strategies there are. Make sure you observe the groups’ safety and stop the exercise if it becomes violent.

6. After the candies in the circle are reached or enough attempts have been made, thank everyone and invite them to sit in a circle for debriefing.

Debriefing questions:

- How do you feel?

- How did you feel during the first round of candy distribution? Ask those who got candies and those who did not.

- What and how did the group decide afterwards?

- Who had the power to make decisions and to come up with rules everyone had to follow?

- What was the criterion according to which some people received access to candies and decision-making and others did not? Was that a fair criterion? Why or why not? (If the group does not mention it, the facilitator can stress that the criterion did not depend on the will of a person – i.e. no one has control on the decision when they were born).

- What were the strategies for reaching the candies in the second part of the exercise? Were there discontentment and aggressive behaviour? If so, were they justified and why?

- If candies are a public resource and owning them – gives the possibility to participate in decision-making, is that fair? Is this how things look like in our society? Give examples.

- How do we solve unjust situations and unjust rules?

- What is the relation between power and racism in the exercise? What about society?

Pyramid of racism

Summary: In this activity participants explore different manifestations of racism and are asked to categorise them as hate crimes, visible racism and invisible racism.

Topics: invisible racism

Materials: printed copies of the list of manifestations of racism (annexed); printed copies of models of the pyramid (annexed)

Procedure

1. Divide participants in small groups of four to five people each.

2. Give each group a copy of the pyramid. The task for the group is to review all manifestations of racism and to locate them in what they think is the appropriate part of the pyramid. (Depending on time and groups dynamics, you can either decrease the number of manifestations or also give them time to come up with additional ones).

3. Groups present their work and are then invited for a discussion in plenary.

Debriefing questions

- How do you feel?

- Did you think of other examples? If so, what are they?

- What was the most difficult one to decide on and why?

- Why do you think the shape is a pyramid and not – for example – three circles or three squares?

- Why is invisible racism in the foundation? (The foundation holds the rest of the structure: we would not have physical assault at the top, if there was no foundation to hold it)

- What is the underlying idea in visible and invisible racism?

- Manifestations of invisible racism are widespread, normalised and we do not take them very seriously. What are the consequences of it, however?

Annex: List of manifestations of racism

- Genocide (physical eradication of people from a certain race or ethnic origin);

- Racist-motivated beating (e.g. “Let’s go and beat some Blacks”);

- Jokes (e.g. “A Jew and Black guy enter a bar…”)

- Proverbs

- Sustainable phrases (e.g. „Like a white person”)

- Compliments which degrade groups you belong to (e.g. “You are educated, not like the others from your ethnic group”)

- Generalizations (“Don’t hire an Indian person. A friend of my sister was Indian and he was very unreliable.”)

- Stereotypes (“Women cannot drive”)

- Myths (“They are genetically more stupid”)

- Calls for violence (“We should fight against the Muslim invasion with any means”)

- Funny nicknames

- Political actions (e.g. evictions of Roma families, but not touching illegal hotels)

- Rejection of services (e.g. not serving Latino immigrants in a restaurant)

- Segregation (putting children from one ethnic group in one school or a class within the same school)

- Distant treatment (physically avoiding proximity with someone because of skin colour)

- Discrimination at the workplace (systematic rejection of hiring or promoting certain groups – due to origin, gender, etc.)

- Degrading on personal level (an official speaks to some clients politely and with respect, and with others informally)

- Presumptions on outer appearance (“She has funny eyes, she must be Chinese”)

- Dehumanising (comparing people to animals or insects – monkeys, dogs, cockroaches, rats, parasites, etc.)

Annex: Model of pyramid

Racism in motion

Summary: Through a short theatre play, participants are invited to discuss and present their own understanding of racism.

Topics: invisible racism

Materials: -

Procedure

1. Divide participants in small groups of four to five people in a group.

2. Ask each group to briefly discuss what racism is according to them and to present it in a short theatrical scene (each scene should be up to two minutes). You can also give additional requirements, e.g. no talking in the scene.

3. Each group presents their scene. After each scene the other groups can ask clarifying questions or try to guess what was visualized, but do not allow discussions before all scenes are presented.

Debriefing questions

- How do you feel?

- Were you surprised by something and if so, what?

- What was common in all scenes? What was different?

- Can racism be explained in other ways apart from what was showed in the scenes? If so, how?

- The scenes usually show actions and motions. Can racism also take form of inaction and if so, how?

- Were there aspects of racism we did not see in the scenes and if so, what are they?

You can use the debriefing discussion to extract a definition of racism as a way of thinking that can take various manifestations: some more extreme and explicit, while others, at a first glance, more harmless. They, however, come from the same mindset: that some people are worth more than others.

Racism or not?

Summary: This is a moving debate exercise, where participants need to decide if certain sentences or situations represent racism.

Topics: invisible racism

Materials: labels “Racism” and “Not racism”; list of situations (annexed); computer and projector (optional)

Procedure

1. Stick the two labels “Racism” and “Not racism” on opposites walls of the room.

2. Explain to the group that you are going to read some short situations and that each of them will need to decide if the situation is a manifestation of racism and position themselves in the room accordingly. Explain that they can change their mind and move at any time.

3. Reach each situation, loud and clear and repeat it a couple of times. Give time to participants to make up their minds and position themselves. You can also project each statement.

4. After the participants have positioned themselves on each statement, ask some of them to share why they are standing where they are standing. Remind the participants of the previously agreed meaning of racism as a mindset according to which some people are worth more than others. Do not encourage long discussions, especially if one of the same group of participants is talking.

Debriefing questions

- How do you feel?

- Were you surprised by something and if so, what?

- Which situation was the most difficult to decide on and why?

- All of the situations are indeed examples of racism, according to our understanding of it. Would you agree and if so, why?

- What manifestations of racism did we see in the different situations? What other situations are there? Give examples from real life.

Annex: List of situations

- The sentence “Black people are monkeys”

- They do not let Roma people in a bar, because two purses went missing the week before.

- People from the UK no longer want their country to accept migrants from Bulgaria.

- The sentence “Muslim people are violent”

- The sentence “She is Black, but very beautiful”

- George cannot vote because he is in a wheelchair and the voting station has stairs

- A group of people vandalises a billboard showing two men hugging and calling for acceptance of the LGBTI community

See

Summary: In this activity, participants are encouraged to reflect on their best qualities and present them to the others.

Topics: good treatment

Materials: paper, pens/pencils

Procedure

1. Tell the participants that they have to make a list of their best qualities as part of competition to win a wonderful trip around the world. They have to be honest, but also not shy.

2. Give the participants time to reflect individually and write their presentations down. Then present in plenary.

3. Before moving to debriefing, you can tell the participants that everyone did a great job, which is why everyone is a winner.

Debriefing questions

- How do you feel?

- What was more difficult – to formulate our best qualities or to present them in front of others? Why?

- Would the list look differently if it was to be only kept for ourselves and if so, why?

- Which of the qualities relate to how we interact with others and treat them?

- Why is it important to be more aware of our qualities? How can this relate to fighting racism?

- What qualities on the list do we wish to have but we do not yet possess? How can we improve them?

- What qualities do people need to have to build a world free of racism?

The network

Summary: This is a simulation activity in which participants are put in the role of people who work for a social network and need to decide if a certain content is hate speech that goes against the regulations of the platform.

Topics: invisible racism, hate speech

Materials:

- Role cards (annexed, an equal number to the number of people in each group)

- Cards with social network content (annexed)

- Cards with the rules of the social network (annexed, one for each group)

- Cards with legal regulations (one for each group) – you need to prepare them before the activity. Use your national regulations coming from the Criminal / Civil Code related to hate speech and hate crimes. Copy them on preferably one piece of paper.

Procedure

NOTE: The activity can be performed in one group (preferably up to sixteen people). If the group is large, it can be divided into two.

1. At the beginning of the activity, ask the participants whether they use online social networks. Ask which ones and how often? Why do they use them?

2. Ask the participants to imagine that they are part of the NETWORK team, a social networking site for young people, with about four million registered users. Every day users of the portal post about five million entries and comments. The portal is growing and each month the number of users is increasing. Your team deals with the reports from portal users related to violations of regulations. Your task is to decide what to do with each report. You can leave the reported posts, delete them or even report them to law enforcement agencies if they constitute a crime. You will be divided into three equal groups. Each group has its own number: one, two and three.

- Group 1: Team leaders

- Group 2: Portal policy experts

- Group 3: Social consultants

3. Explain to the participants that the portal has a specific form of activity: a group of social consultants are involved in the team dealing with the submitted content. The social consultants are young people (portal users), who have the same right to decide as other team members.

4. Ask participants to draw their role cards. Then tell them to go to their groups. Their task will be to familiarise themselves with the rules of the NETWORK and legal regulations and discuss the submitted content. Give each group the following materials: excerpt from the rules of the NETWORK, a sheet of paper with legal regulations and a sheet of paper with content from the portal. Each group will have to make decisions about what to do with the given content. Ask the participants of each group to make notes about their decisions and the arguments behind them. They have about thirty minutes to do so.

5. After this part of the activity, divide participants into smaller groups: there must be three people in each small group - one person representing team leaders, portal policy experts and social consultants. Each group collectively needs to make decisions on what to do with a given content from the portal. After approx. twenty minutes, ask the groups to present their proposed actions for each of the content on the portal. You can draw a table on the board and collect all proposed actions, for example:

Content

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

Debriefing questions:

- How did you feel during the activity? What was the most difficult for you?

- How were the decisions made? Are you satisfied with the way decisions were made?

- Are the proposed solutions appropriate to the content? How was this decided?

- Did you take into account in your decision that the content was posted by a private or public person?

- Should public persons have the right to say "more" than others? If so, why? If not, why?

- Do you read the regulations of the social networking sites where you have an account? What is there? Are there any mentions of hate speech?

- How do you react when you see hate speech on the Internet? Do you report hate speech? What is the portal's reaction?

- How do you find legal regulations related to hate speech? Which groups are not mentioned in the law? Why? Does it mean that they can be offended and attacked?

- What are the limitations of the right to freedom of expression?

Annex: Excerpt from the NETWORK Regulations

What matters most is the safety of our service users.

We are very carefully examining reports of threats to identify serious threats to public and private safety and security. We remove threats of personal injury to individuals. We also remove threats of potential theft, vandalism or other threats related to the financial sphere.

The NETWORK encourages open discussion, sharing views and opinions. However, we remove content that promotes hatred, directly attacking users because of their:

- skin colour,

- ethnicity,

- nationality,

- religion or belief,

- sexual orientation,

- gender, gender identity,

- disability or illness.

We do not allow the NETWORK to be used by organizations and individuals who promote hatred towards protected groups.

We do not allow organizations to create pages on the NETWORK that promote terrorist activity or organised illegal activities.

We are also removing material that expresses support for groups involved in the above-mentioned activities, characterised by unlawful and violent behaviour. It is forbidden to pay tribute to and support the leaders of these organisations, as well as to accept their activities.

We do not tolerate harassment or bullying. In gross violations of the law, we report them to law enforcement.

We remove material that intimidates others or promotes violence and sexual abuse.

(Developed on the basis of the Regulations and Facebook rules)

Annex: Role cards

Group ONE: Team leaders

Your task will be to hold a meeting in a group of three people: apart from you, there will be a portal policy expert and a social consultant. Your work will consist of two stages:

STAGE ONE: Meeting in a group of team leaders. Read the excerpt from the portal's rules and regulations carefully, as well as the current legal regulations in the country. Also, discuss the submitted content and think about what to do with it. You have several options: delete the content, leave the content, contact the user, report the content to law enforcement agencies, close the user account. You can also suggest another solution.

STAGE TWO: Your task will be to hold / facilitate a meeting in a group of three people: in addition to you, there will be a portal policy expert and a social consultant. During the work of your group you have to decide what to do with the submitted content. Your task will be to lead the work of the group. At the beginning, welcome and introduce the group members. Then read or show the first piece of paper with content from the portal and ask the group members to give their opinion. Then decide what to do with the content. It is up to you to finally decide what to do with the content. Remember that you have to justify each decision.

Group TWO: Portal policy experts

You are the group that is responsible for the policy of the portal and the compliance of its users. You take great care to ensure that the decisions made about the content of the portal are in accordance with the rules and regulations and the law in force in the country. Your work will consist of two stages:

STAGE ONE: Meeting in a group of portal policy experts. Read the excerpt from the portal's regulations carefully as well as the current legal regulations in the country. Discuss the content and think about what to do with it. You have several options: delete the content, leave the content, contact the user, report the content to law enforcement agencies, close the user account. You can also suggest another solution.

STAGE TWO: Meeting in a small group of three people: besides you there will be a team leader and a social consultant. During the work of your group you have to decide what to do with the submitted content. The meeting will be facilitated by the team leader. Present your proposal on what to do with the content and discuss it. The final decision is up to the team leader.

Group THREE: Social consultants

You are a group of people who have been selected as social consultants through a competition. Your role is to make sure that the employees of the portal do not abuse the right to delete the content of the portal and that the right to freedom of expression and opinion are respected. Your work will consist of two stages:

STAGE ONE: Meeting in a group of social consultants. Read the excerpt from the portal's regulations carefully as well as the current legal regulations in the country. Discuss the content and think about what to do with it. You have several options: delete the content, leave the content, contact the user, report the content to law enforcement agencies, close the user account. You can also suggest another solution.

STAGE TWO: Meeting in a small group of three people: apart from you, there will be a team leader and a portal policy expert. During the work of your group you must decide what to do with the submitted content. The meeting will be facilitated by the team leader. Present your proposal on what to do with the content and present your arguments. The final decision is up to the team leader.

Annex: Content from the portal

1

Private person's comment under a press article on reports of child abuse by refugees in swimming pools in Germany (the article appeared on the website "Not for the Islamisation of Europe")

And are there no real guys in Germany who would intervene in the only right way, namely by force and aggression? If one of the refugees got punched in their face, next time he would think about what he was doing.

2

The non-governmental organisation put posters with the following content on their page:

Homosexuality seriously harms life and health

Homosexuals have been convicted twice as often for sex crimes. Homosexuals were four times more likely to commit murder.

(besides the text, there is a picture of the man in handcuffs on each poster)

3

A well-known city councillor posts this post on her profile:

Grab that thing and shave it off bald!

Under the text there is a photo of an MP from the opposition party, who was criticised by the councillor.

4

A private person posting about refugees:

Leave the women and children and all those bulls who are looking for entertainment pack on a plane to take them to Syria and Iraq or where they are from and let them fight for freedom and when they win, let them work for their country... Arbeit macht frei or work makes free.....

5

A film of a private person in which such words are spoken:

The biggest obstacle to the freedom movement, which is aiming to strengthen the nation, are not oligarchs, mafia, establishment or other enemies, but there is a simple cowardice, a simple Jewish passivity (...). The oppressors and the passive Jewish mob will want to bring you to your knees, crawl, grind, swallow, digest, and in the end, they will want to spit you out, because you are not needed.

Who is who?

Summary: Participants work with pictures and explore biases connected to physical appearances.

Topics: invisible racism, stereotypes and prejudices

Materials: set of photos (annexed), printed copies of a list of questions (annexed)

Procedure

1. Divide the participants in small groups of three or four people and give each group a set of eight pictures.

2. Ask participants to look at all the pictures carefully and then select one which resonates with them the most, and whose story they would like to discover. (Alternatively, to save resources you can just allocate one photo per group randomly or on your own choosing).

3. Whenever all groups have selected a photo, distribute the list of questions. Explain that the questions will help the participants to create a story about the person after carefully studying their photo.

4. Ask the groups to present their stories in plenary and move to debriefing.

Debriefing questions:

- Which photos did you choose and why?

- What information did you find in the photo that helped you to develop the story?

- What was the level of difficulty to answer questions about this person?

- How probable is it that your story is true? Why do you think so?

- Why do you think we associate certain stories with certain physical characteristics?

- In which situations do we use physical characteristics to create an opinion about other people in real life?

- What kind of consequences basing our judgement on physical characteristics could have?

Annex: List of questions

- What is this person’s name?

- How many siblings does this person have?

- What does this person’s home look like? Who do they live with?

- Where would this person go on holiday?

- What would this person do in their free time?

- How does this person make a living?

- What languages would this person speak?

- What level of education would this person have?

- Would this person have a partner, or children?

- What are this person ‘s dreams and goals?

Annex: Photos

https://unsplash.com/collections/10024483/activity-who-is-who

APPROACHES

Community work

If you stop the ball or try to control it by touching it twice subsequently, the referee blows the whistle for the foul and the opponents take the point. Diabolic and anti-historical: the pass as a mandatory gesture by regulation in a world that teaches you to hold on your own things, your privileges, your dreams, your goals. There is no one who can squeeze if there is no one else to lift, no one who can raise if there is no one else who has received the opponent's bat.

Mauro Berruto, ex- coach of the Italian Volleyball Male Team

Thinking and then generating community actions that have the very delicate issues of exclusion and racism as a reference point means to position oneself on two levels that are both theoretical and practical:

- a first level concerns what we mean by community and how much this "entity", so multiform and interpretable, can be potential for actions against racism and exclusion of all kinds.

- a second level is how challenging it is to involve the community not so much and not only on actions strongly focused on anti-racist issues but on actions that can touch and cross the areas "around" such a topic. These areas are real systems that can then block the perspective of reception, integration, social cohesion in the contexts of life.

Community

What is a community?

A community can generally be defined as the place where individual and collective identities are formed and strengthened, the place where they are recognised, confirmed, nurtured and transformed. Thus defined, a community is the place, the framework in which the process of identification takes place. The concept of community recalls other concepts and terms that help to understand, although not fully, its meaning: the physical boundaries of a territory, its political and economic organization, its population, its expansion on the territory, its history and origins, the system of shared values, the problems, the various services activated to solve them, the needs of the population, etc.

Each of us lives in a community but not everyone knows how it articulates and expresses itself, and we are even less aware of our role and power within its framework. Without knowledge and awareness, however, it is not possible to develop a sense of belonging and participation that is expressed in an active citizenship.

The demand for "community" is one of the most topical and urgent in a world characterised by increasing opportunities for change and transformation but, at the same time, increasingly lack shared and binding points of reference. Living within a community does not automatically mean knowing what it is, what its origins and its boundaries are, what the political, administrative and economic organization is, what the system of common values and emerging issues are, and what is the organization of services that meets the needs of the population is.

In the society of multiple opportunities, where dimensions change with respect to possible technological interactions, on the one hand the possibility of communication increases, but on the other hand there is the risk of weakening the bond of proximity[4] and the value of the physical context of life. There is no doubt that modern time brings important possibilities, but it cannot be denied that, especially for a young person, such possibilities can be disorienting. The search for and redefinition of a "physical" space where one can "feel part" - and then, with a clear objective, to initiate and consolidate sharing processes - becomes an urgency for cohesion and responsible living together.

The fundamental elements to define a physical space are undoubtedly the "territory” (natural and man-made physical environment), which guarantees the necessary resources for the development of the community and provides the possibilities and constraints that influence communications, "social relations" and "social bonds" (bonds of solidarity, identification, competition and conflict that result in a form of social organization), which characterise the population included in that territory.

What does “acting consciously in a community” mean?

A territory that is also a community can support people to develop the ability to share needs, equal rights and symmetrical duties, linked and coordinated in a bond of solidarity ordered to promote the construction of the common good. Everything lies in recognizing that territory, that context, that community as one's own, not in the sense of "property" but as a space where each one can express freely, feeling part of it, and critically share.

The community drawn in this way is certainly a complex system. Reading and interpreting it is not simple, since if considered as a system, it is not the sum of the parts, but the result of their interrelation and the will of the actors to get involved. Every decision is in fact defined thanks to all transversal elements. It is difficult to recognise the forces that operate beyond the structural elements, because their action is in constant evolution and it is not easy to describe it within one's own reference maps. If, on the one hand, the community as "value" is a basic element to set any reasoning on that subject, on the other hand, the aspect of the community as "practice" is equally fundamental and it must be the heritage of each person but also, and above all, the heritage of the community as a compact structure. A community practice, when competently promoted, is therefore fundamental to keep the collective motivation to make people participate in positive and correct lifestyles. The sharing and the interaction between people are supported and grow, in fact, through rules and conventions and, in an immediately preceding phase, on the positive reception of the same rules and similar conventions.

What are the tools to act in a community?

A first act, which is addressed to all the actors in the field, concerns the capacity of perception and awareness of the place so that it can express all the potential generativity. Feeling the place means building a common relational sense, it means knowing the context in which one person is situated and recognising it as a personal and collective conscious object.

A second act that has to do with the dimension of separations and incrustations that an ecosystem, to become favourable, must lower or eliminate. It requires a systemic action that involves social figures as main actors that are capable of interpreting models of intervention in terms of enabling communities and organisations and that are able to reread and reinterpret themselves in an innovative way.

Finally, a third act that, thanks to a context trained to trespass, can accept hybridisations, diversities and conflicts in an inclusive way, living the place with relational density.

A relational density makes it possible to bring together all social acts aimed at developing the autonomy of people and the entire community of reference in symbolic and practical areas.

These areas are capable of living and changing thanks to the presence of this intense relationship.

The latter lies within that framework of meanings expressed with strength and great vision by Ostrom[5], who has shown that communities, understood as the set of appropriators and users of collective resources are able, under certain conditions, to manage natural resources in a way that is satisfactory for themselves and allow resources a long lasting period.

And for certain conditions, Ostrom refers to knowledge, trust and communication among the members of a community; the existence of systems of rules or institutions already established on the territory; and the non-interference of an external authority, such as the State.

It is, therefore, a chain of skills to be conquered and that starts from awareness, passes from the acquisition of competence and arrives at the dense construction of permanent relationships.

Community actions to counteract prejudices, racism and other forms of intolerance

Running community actions

Promoting community involvement means opening spaces for citizens' participation, where forms of active citizenship can be experienced, by going beyond the classic logic of claim and complaint, and where it is possible to develop a sense of responsibility and to create understanding and trust relationships among the social actors at stake.

Community Development means orienting action to improve relations among the local components of a "socio-territorial subsystem with defined boundaries", to face conflicts and remove blocks that hinder the expression of latent resources and potential, to promote the construction of a ‘plural we’ and the positive redefinition of a shared collective identity that allows the development of new ways of individual and collective living.

Actions should be based on proximity, reciprocity and “capacitation”

Community action must take care of the experiential value and therefore some key words as proximity and reciprocity and capacitation are fundamental.

Proximity, as a noun that indicates a double movement, to go beyond with the glance and share, and a double perspective, inclusive, empowering and enabling[6].

To go further, it means to raise one's eyes and give one's existence a horizon. To raise one's eyes means to be able to see others that we cross in the wonderful paradox of being close but feeling close to what we see far away.

Thus, it is necessary to refer to the concept of belonging that is contrary to feeling alone and isolated from a context that conditions and limits us, we belong to the same horizon that allows us to begin to identify ourselves as “we” and not as “they and I”. In other words, to feel that belonging can be at the same time the element of union of the positive and critical aspects of the context in which we live. My life will grow in relation to others’ life, sharing the same context and place (rich in potential but also in fragile elements that need to be rethought).

This is how one can understand the word proximity, not only in the sense of closeness, but also in an inclusive perspective. Our horizon depends on sharing a collective horizon among those subjects belonging to the same context.

In this panorama, therefore, the theme of reciprocity practices is also central. Reciprocity is not an individual issue but, primarily, a relationship.

The ethics of reciprocity among individuals is the foundation of dignity, peaceful coexistence, legitimacy, justice, recognition and respect among individuals who are also very different from each other. Reciprocity is the essential basis for interpreting the modern concept of collectivity.

Proximity and reciprocity, together, can succeed in reconstructing voluntary interweaving among people who have a piece of destiny, a dream, a perspective in place that, if shared, become more imaginable, more feasible, and more sustainable.

The possibility of giving life to something attainable and achievable therefore unwinds on a ground of collective elaboration, in which the desires of the social group can take shape, so as to "re-learn how to think about the future"[7].

Community actions to counteract racism and other forms of intolerance should be based on some prejudicial dimensions

The rapid modification of social phenomenology in the Western world makes it necessary to have a great capacity of adaptation to the social offer, which could lower situations of conflict more and more in progress (for instance in the field of migratory flows, of urban security, of social micro-criminality, and in relation to the increasing invisible racism actions in our communities,...), and give a great support to the creation of quality processes of social life, certainly more “liveable”.

This can and must be done with institutional devices, with norms, with procedures, with educational processes, but also and above all with community practices.

In this framework it is important to understand first of all that it becomes challenging to involve the community not so much and not only on actions strongly focused on the topics (in our case on anti-racism) but on actions that can touch and cross the areas "around" the problems. These areas are real systems and can then block the perspective of reception, integration, social cohesion in the contexts of life.

And so, three prejudicial dimensions that block (or if "enabled" open) the development of communities should be taken into consideration:

- the border.

- the hierarchy.

- the "private" places.

And it is on these that it is worth trying to do an intense and strategic work with communities.

For this reason, as the boundary divides, we have to go beyond or involve different, unusual groups with whom to design and plan how to overcome challenges and not just run simulation activities.

The hierarchy makes everything classified by roles and places identifying the ones below and the ones above. Horizontal formulas must then be used: everyone decides.

The privatisation of places, of contexts that were born as public, marginalises and increases the distances with marginalised groups. The concept of the common good must be recovered. The "common" being of a good depends on the choice of a community, which takes care of it with the same attention with which the members of that community normally take care of their own goods and above all share them

Community actions to counteract racism and other forms of intolerance can follow a method

The model of intervention can be traced back to that of Participatory Action-Research, which facilitates participatory processes in the community and strengthens the "fabric" of the community through the awareness and legitimation of the problems felt and the collective definition of how to choose and solve problems.

Assuming Action-research as a modality of intervention means entering into the processes, social and cultural dynamics acting in a specific community and developing the operational path and appropriate techniques to that particular micro context of action; it is used to promote actions and processes of social animation aimed at supporting the emergence of unexpressed needs and the activation of new groups and positive leaders.

Action-research requires the ability to actively listen and a participatory observation of reality, preparatory to the identification and preparation of paths that allow the production of meanings by all actors, to rebuild sense and responsibility together and reconfigure the "social field" in which interactions and links act.

This can also mean promoting "actions of rupture", understood as disturbance of existing balances but also as reopening channels of communication, which can facilitate necessary mutual recognition and develop new thoughts and relationships.

Community actions to counteract racism and other forms of intolerance can follow/can be part of an educational process

Community actions are structured and diversified moments in relation to the context aimed at creating connections between the content dealt in the training/educational activity and the community.

It is a learning exercise for young people, but also for the systems that welcome them (school, university, work, aggregation centres, etc.), because it creates training conditions that work on interaction with the other, on the ability to tell and develop a framework of ordered meanings, on the dimension of integration between systems that live in the same context.

Community actions can be based on the following pillars:

- agility - a community intervention is in itself 'disordered' in the sense that it cannot be defined in its totality because some elements of development will be decreed by the context and the moment.

- continuity - they are linked to acts and processes already existing in the context in which the community action takes place.

- horizontality - use horizontal formulas: everyone decides.

- involvement - they cross over: they involve different, unusual groups and categories.

- spatial openness - use unusual spaces and places, public or becoming common.

They can also be based on a simple methodological framework so defined:

1. definition of the main objective and of possible indirect or secondary objectives Identification of the objectives in the preparation phase is fundamental in order not to lose the priorities but also to enrich them with possible other secondary but “present” objectives.

2. definition of the main action and any indirect or secondary actions – Identification of the actions that are essential in order not to lose priorities but also to enrich them with any other secondary but present "events".

3. area of action - The territory (which can also be a place, a neighbourhood, etc.) must be precisely defined

4. reading the codes of the chosen space and choice of strategic knots

- reading the context. Each defined space has codes and recurrences (only as an example...there are many elderly people, there are/there are no aggregation spaces, there are/there are no active associations, ...etc.) to be considered in the design and evaluation phase (whether confirmed or not).

- Definition, once you have read the codes and recurrences, of which of these are the strategic knots to count on (i.e. the places, the people, the situations to count on for the success of the action).

Community actions in STAR educational activities: sharing experiences

Carrying out educational activities in schools, community actions were an integral part of the educational process itself. The participants in the workshops, mostly students between the ages of 14 and 18, conducted community actions after the workshop activities on the theme of racism and invisible racism.

Community action was incorporated into the educational process considering that in the experiential learning cycle, as defined by Kolb, there is no learning without experimentation and action.

With the participants, after dealing with the theme of racism and invisible racism, identifying causes and consequences of these phenomena, working on internal and external challenges, we moved on to the development of community actions that had the following requirements:

- Related to the context of the participants' lives

- Linked to the communities of reference, with which to develop subsequent links

- Related to the topics covered in the workshop part

- Allowing participants to act in peace doing actions in which they felt comfortable

- Creating preconditions for future reflection and awareness of both the participants and the community of reference

The actions were carried out in territories, known by the participants and identified as reference territories for the STAR project. The participants followed the principles mentioned in the previous paragraphs and used their creativity to intercept people who are usually not involved in actions against racism, in unusual places.

Hereinafter, you can find some of the actions carried out to stimulate communities to counteract racism and invisible racism:

- A balloon, a flower for you! The participants chose quotes on racism and invisible racism to give to people together with paper balloons or flowers or bookmarks made by them. The aim of this activity was to catch people’s attention with a simple gesture such as giving a balloon or a flower and then let them stop and reflect on the Star project's themes.

- Fishing at the bar! The participants proposed to put baskets in the bars of their communities, containing phrases/quotes related to racism and invisible racism. The aim of this activity was to make the people at the bar curious and then make them aware of the project's themes. Also, in this activity participants chose the quotes in the weeks before the realisation of the community action and they went to some bars in the city centre to tell about the Star project and thus involve the chosen bars in the realisation of the activity itself.

- You’ve got mail! The participants had the idea of delivering envelopes in some houses in the city centre containing quotes on racism and invisible racism with an explanation of the Star project. The aim of this activity was to try to "enter people's homes", in their daily life to make them reflect on the project's themes.

- Social experiment: Have you ever hugged a foreigner? In this activity the participants got involved directly by stopping people in the street who were looking at the sign made by them, calling people to stop.

Those who stopped were asked for a hug and then if they had ever hugged a foreign person. In this way a relationship was established in which an open confrontation on the subject of racism and invisible racism was possible.

"Even if we knew everything there is to know

about the mental structure of each

musician, we'd still struggle to

foretell

group improvisation.

Keith Sawyer - psychologist and jazz musician".

by:

The geography of genius.

A search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley- Eric Weiner

Peer education

There are many approaches to education and many methodologies and methods used in educational processes, the choice of which is usually determined by the target group, the aims and objectives, the time available and resources at hand. “Peer education“ in the STAR project is an approach, a communication channel, a methodology, a philosophy and a strategy.

What is peer education?

The term itself consists of two words and their explanations may be helpful in understanding what peer education really is. “Peer” usually refers to а person who we share а certain characteristic with, such as: age, gender, belonging to the same social group, doing the same job, or having the same social status. However, traditionally the term has been mainly used in relation to age. Education is more complicated to define as it may happen as a part of a planned process (formal and non-formal education) or totally incidentally (informal education) by using very different tools. In general, education is the process during which we learn something – getting knowledge, learning some skills, developing character and/or developing attitudes.

So, in a nutshell, peer education is about learning from peers. And in the case of the STAR project, it is young people learning from young people. One can say that there is nothing special about it; young people in general always learn something from other young people. This is naturally true, however, most of such learning happens incidentally (during school breaks, during leisure time activities, or while doing sports). All of this is very valid as our peers are a very important source of learning. However, in some instances the content of such learning may be inaccurate, based on stereotypes, or fake news. Peer education aims at effecting change in people who have the same characteristics as we do – the change on individual level (e.g. change of attitudes, development of new skills or new knowledge) or a bigger social level (e.g. modifying norms or stimulating collective action to bring about change). In order to achieve it we used the principles, approaches and methodology of non-formal education, which is a planned educational process with concrete learning objectives using a variety of methods that promote participation and holistic learning. Our aim was to change attitudes related to racism and promote behaviours and action to achieve greater equality, tolerance and social justice.

The theory behind peer education

As stated above, peer education is about bringing about change on different levels. Such a change includes the change of attitudes and adopting certain (desired) behaviours. Therefore, our approach (like in the case of many peer education programmes) draws on several behavioural theories.

Social learning theory - developed by Albert Bandura and his colleagues. The theory is very broad in scope and concerns the mechanisms through which new ways of behaviour emerge, are sustained, change and disappear.  This theory assumes that new behaviours are acquired on the basis of the consequences of one's own actions (the awareness of the effects of one's own actions facilitates the change of behaviour and is a necessary condition for its appearance) and through modelling (observation of someone else's actions and their effects; focusing attention on the behaviour of the model, remembering it and trying it out in one's own actions). In short, the social learning theory asserts that people learn by observing the behaviour of other people who they identify with. In peer education contexts, peer educators serve as models young people learn from and learn together with.

Theory of reasoned action – developed by Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen. This theory assumes that people behave rationally and consider the possible consequences of their behaviour in terms of its usefulness for their own purposes or needs. A certain behaviour (including problematic behaviour) is preceded by the intention to undertake it in the future. In short, people's attitudes to changing certain behaviour is strongly influenced by their view of the positive or negative consequences of the behaviour, and what their peers (including peer educators) think about it. Young people will be more willing to change their perceptions about certain groups (which is based on stereotypes) or even stop their abusive behaviour if they see their peers being very strong in their reasoning and showing attitudes of tolerance.

Theory of participatory / empowerment education (pedagogy of the oppressed) – developed by Paolo Freire. It assumes that a person learns best from authentic life situations. The author of this theory believed that such education frees a person from situations of oppression (which undoubtedly racism or discrimination are an example of). Freire conducted his work mainly with poor and socially excluded people: it was on the basis of this experience that he created his theory of learning. According to Freire, education only occurs in the process of dialogue, and this begins with personal or group experiences. By discussing what is already known to them (because it is based on real experience), people go beyond this area to learn something new, something that other people and their own ability to think and reflect can provide. In this way, learners become aware of their situation and become motivated to change their behaviour or situation. Peer education creates a horizontal process where all people are equal (at least in their position and age), so they can talk to each other on equal terms, learning together. This way people feel empowered through full participation in the process of learning and in this way they can plan and implement change in their attitudes and behaviours. On top of this, if peer educators, as in the case of the STAR project, come from marginalised and oppressed groups, the educational process they are involved in empowers them to become agents of change in their communities.

The “good” and the “bad” about peer education

There are many positive aspects of using peer education when dealing with specific issues, which in our case was counteracting racism and invisible racism. The authors of “Domino – a manual to use peer group education as a means to fight racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and intolerance” published by the Council of Europe proposes a rationale for using peer education by looking at the following points:

- Efficacy: young people are experts in the topics that affect them personally, they also know the group they work with in the educational context as they can easily associate with it. If they are well trained and supported, they can bring about the change in attitudes and behaviours of their peers

- Communication: young peer educators know the language that reaches their peers, they are able to recognise communication styles and decode youth language codes. In this way they become credible and listened to. They also know what approaches work best with their peer group, be it games or other interactive activities.

- Cost-effectiveness: peer education does not generate lots of costs, which are mainly related with training educators. Most of the time, peer educators work as volunteers and treat educational activities they run as a chance to self-develop and tackle social issues they find important.

- Empowerment: young people can control the process of education. Being responsible for the process of educating peers and sometimes “changing their lives” gives them a lot of power. This power is also given back to the groups young people work with as it enhances youth participation and contributes to important changes in young people’s lives.

Young people, when given responsibility for the group and the learning process, take it very seriously and put a lot of creativity in what they deliver. Therefore, in our case, young people were proposing ideas for educational activities that, in their opinion, would work best in order to achieve aims of workshops. Even if for us, adults, they seemed very disputable or sometimes doubtful (not necessarily in educational value but rather in approach) they worked really well with the group of young people. In this way, young people felt the ownership not only of the process but of the content as well.

It is difficult to find “the bad” about peer education. However, there are some challenges:

- The control from the adults: while the training of peer educators follows the principles of non-formal education and creates the space for young people to be both the participants and creators, the situation of the workshops run by young people at schools may look different. Most of the time workshops at schools were run within usual classes, therefore, the teacher was present during the workshop. Sometimes, the teachers could not take distance to their roles and corrected young people, making remarks related both to the content and methods used. Young peer educators sometimes did not feel powerful enough to respond to those remarks, which ended up in peer educators feeling uneasy and scared.

- The lack of credibility: peer education and peer educators may be sometimes considered not credible enough to provide accurate knowledge to the participants of the workshop. Therefore, the process of preparation (training) of peer educators is very important as well as the continuous support. It also takes time to convince e.g. teachers that this is a very efficient way to talk to young people about issues that affect them.

- The conservative education system: the school system, in some countries, may be very reluctant to experiment with “new” approaches and ways of developing students’ competences. Peer education challenges this system and puts young people at the centre of the process – there is no teacher who “knows” and young people who do not, but rather all people who take part in the process discuss and learn on equal terms. It is important to explain how peer education works and what benefits it brings before starting using it in a formal education setting.

Why peer education to counteract racism and invisible racism?

We believe peer education is a very efficient approach when addressing the topics of racism and invisible racism with young people.

Firstly, racism and invisible racism are a reality for young people: many young people are affected by racism in their community or at school. In some places, being a part of an ethnic minority is strongly connected with stigma and many negative stereotypes and prejudices. Such young people suffer from hate speech and sometimes discrimination. What is more, hate speech that targets people from marginalised and minority groups, especially on social media, is a daily reality for young people. Even if they are not targeted, they witness hate speech and, in most cases, they do not know what to do about it. In the research done with young people in the STAR project, young people clearly stated that hate speech is present on the social media they use, and they are confronted with it practically every day. To some young people it became a daily practice which they ignore as “this is how young people behave nowadays”. All in all, young people know racism and discrimination from their lives, and they are well placed to discuss it with their peers, as they can easily understand the dynamics behind it.

Secondly, peer education against racism and invisible racism fights these phenomena by means that are relevant for young people: young peer educators know what works best with their peers, what will move their “heads and hearts” and what may be the best approach to bring about change. Young peer educators also act as role models for other young people; therefore, they can influence attitude change.

Thirdly, peer education empowers young people to take action against racism: racism and discrimination often result in the feeling of powerlessness and despair. Peer education gives power back in the hands of young people who may become agents of change. Very often, peer education is a starting point for many young people who feel empowered after the experience and get involved in social movements for social justice.

Peer education against racism in practice

There are several important stages in running peer education programmes with young people:

1. Selecting peer educators

This is the initial stage, but very important for the future of the programme. In principle, the programme should be open to all young people. However, the peer education programme against racism should take into account some criteria for selection: young people should be motivated and ready to discuss very sensitive and challenging topics, they should show the interest in developing new competences, they should not be openly racist (xenophobic, homophobic, etc.), they should be motivated to be ready to work with groups of people, and finally they should believe in the values of tolerance, social justice and non-discrimination.

2. Training

Training young peer educators is an essential part of the process. This part usually takes a long time. Besides content related to the topic (definitions of racism, invisible racism, discrimination, etc.) it should include the following elements: principles of non-formal education, group work methods, group dynamics, working in a team, dealing with conflicts in the group, dealing with challenging situations. Some time should be also spent on preparing the scenario for the workshop and trying it out.

3. Workshops

The workshops are the parts when peer educators put the competences they have gained into practice. It is best to organise workshops with young people that are not too long (one hour and a half) and that are run by at least two peer educators.

4. Support

Continuous support is needed for peer educators not only to talk about their feelings and experiences, but also to improve the programme. This part of the process is very important for competence development as it provides space for self-reflection and self-improvement. Therefore, it is best to organise feedback sessions after each workshop and also individual/group mentoring.

5. Evaluation and follow-up

The final stage of the process includes group evaluation of what happened, what was learnt and what can be improved. It is a learning moment for the whole group and also the time when next activities can be planned. Reflecting on the whole process may be tough but it is important to get a perspective on what was achieved and what still needs to be done. Thinking about one’s own learning (what I still need to learn) should be a part of this process.

Mainstreaming anti-racism

Mainstreaming anti-racism in working with young people

¨In theory, nobody has a problem with anti-racism. In practice, as soon as people start doing anti-racist things, there is no end to the slew of commentators who are convinced anti-racists are doing it wrong. It even happens among people who consider themselves progressive.¨

Reni Eddo-Lodge

Paraphrasing the author of the book ¨Why I´m no longer talking to white people about race¨, Reni Eddo-Lodge, we can say that in theory there is a trend in our societies (at least in some of them) to become more inclusive, with an increasing number of people who think of themselves as antiracists. In practice though, we can observe racist behaviours from people who consider themselves antiracists. Reni Eddo-Lodge in her book talks about the murder of a black boy named Stephen Lawrence, and uses it to reflect on racism as follows:

¨We could have asked ourselves honestly, if taking two decades to convict just two of the gang who murdered an innocent teenager was acceptable. We could have asked ourselves if we are ashamed of that. Maybe we could have spoken about the fact that racism had only been a political priority for less than half a century. We could have had a conversation about riots and race, about accountability, about how to move forward from Britain´s most famous race case. We could have had a conversation about how to start eliminating racism. We could have started asking each other about the best way to heal. It could have been pivotal. Instead, the conversation we had was about racism against white people. Racism does not go both ways. (…) We have to recognise it.¨

We can ask ourselves why it is like this. Why there is a big difference between theory and practice, and why it happens that even people with good intentions end up acting racist. And finally, is there anything that we can actually do about it in our lives and in the daily work with young people? One of the things that can be done and is omnipresent in youth work is antiracist mainstreaming.

What is mainstreaming anti-racism?

Taking a dictionary and checking the definition of mainstream (noun) we can find ¨the principal or dominant course, tendency, or trend¨, or (adjective) belonging to or characteristic of a principal, dominant, or widely accepted group, movement, style, and to send into the mainstream means to join the main force. So, whenever we are talking about mainstreaming anti-racism we mean to give importance and visibility to the issue, to dedicate enough time and resources in our activities on the topic, to make anti-racism relevant. More importantly, we do not do that because it is a priority set by donors, which we need to tackle in our projects, but because we truly believe in its importance.

There are two main reasons why mainstreaming anti-racism is important and needed. First of all, to raise awareness about racism, since sensitivity on the topic is still relatively poor.  If we read and listen to the experiences of people of colour, we will understand that there is still a very long way to go, that representation of non-white history in school curriculum is insufficient as well as the representation of people of colour in popular culture, media, etc.; that the topic of structural racism is avoided, and there is still a strong belief that the thing called white privilege does not exist, and your achievements in life only depend on your efforts. The second reason why we need mainstreaming is to normalise anti-racism instead of racism. We would like to have a society which is anti-racist. We would like young people not only to state that they are not racists, but to actually undertake actions which are antiracist. This can be done by giving anti-racism enough space and visibility. We need to embed it in every aspect of our work in order to make it fairer and more applicable to the needs of minority communities, but also so that we can be constantly sending the message in our environment about how important anti-racism is. From this perspective, we could compare the antiracist mainstreaming to the song that you hear once and you skip in your player, but after listening to the song fifty times, you cannot get this song out of your head, and keep singing it over and over. In this way it can become normalised – just like invisible racism is deeply rooted in our environment and is the norm, we should strive to replace it with anti-racism and make it the norm instead.

Mainstreaming of anti-racism in youth work

Whenever we are talking about the mainstreaming of anti-racism in youth work, we refer to all the actions that can help to make racism and its consequences visible, to raise awareness on the need to ensure the representation and visibility of people coming from different minorities, to promote the diversity and inclusion, and finally motivate young people to become proactive in eliminating racism. It is important to underline that it is not necessary to organise specific activities that focus on anti-racism, but to rather reflect how we, as youth workers, can introduce the topic of anti-racism in our everyday activities with young people and make it a transversal element. For example, let us say you run a theatre club for youth, you meet with young people once a week, and you prepare a play that is shown to a bigger public at the end of the year. Is there anything that you can do to mainstream anti-racism in this activity without changing the main objective of a theatre play? Yes, there are different ways to do that.

Some of our recommendations:

1. Ensure that professionals working with young people are trained in anti-racism

Training is essential to be able to mainstream anti-racism in working with young people. Youth workers should be prepared for any situation that can happen in the group, including possible reactions to racist behaviours or comments. Youth workers should be ready to discuss the issues related to racism, and/or inclusion, and this is simply not possible without proper preparation.

2. Work on the antiracist competences of youth workers, because Personal is Political

In youth work practice, youth workers very often become role models for young people, and their behaviours or actions are often noticed and/or reproduced. Therefore, it is essential for youth work professionals to act in accordance to the values we promote. Since we already know that racism is a consequence of power relations, and if we work on deconstructing them with young people, we can give an example by not overusing our power as youth workers, but rather share it with the young people we work with. This is already an important step in antiracist mainstreaming.

3. Reflect how to incorporate anti-racism topics into the activities

If we come back to the example with the theatre play, in order to mainstream anti-racism, we can think about selecting a play created by an author of colour or where the protagonist belongs to a minority. Alternatively, or along with that, we can discuss with young people if there is something that could make the play or the performance more inclusive. We can also ask young people: why do we imagine Juliet from the famous Shakespearean play as a white, slim girl with long hair? And how necessary is to reproduce this picture?

4. Outreach to young people from minorities with invitation to participate in activities

Those of us who work in the field of international youth projects, almost always claim that we include young people with fewer opportunities in our activities. However, when it comes to implementation, many organisations share that they wanted to include young people from minorities or with other difficulties, but they simply did not apply. But we can ask ourselves: have we done enough to encourage and motivate them to participate? How have we promoted our activities through proper channels? Is posting the offer in our newsletter or Facebook page, which is being followed mainly by people who are already aware of the opportunities enough? We should strive to establish new collaborations, promote our activities in places where young people are, go and talk to them, and ask about their needs. Another reason apart from not getting the news, which limits the participation of young people with fewer opportunities is the fear that they cannot do it, because of different reasons, like money, accessibility or self-esteem. For example, a person with reduced mobility might fear that they will not be able to participate because the space will not be adapted. That is why we should be proactive to inform about the accessibility in this case.

5. Keeping safe space

Whenever we talk about safe space, we usually mean putting extra time and effort into creating emotional safety in the group of young people we work with and make sure that there are common rules that the group agrees on. It is especially important when we work with diverse groups. As we know from the previous chapters, microaggressions often can be unconscious, but still harmful. By creating safe spaces where everyone is encouraged to express themselves without being judged, we can actually achieve an open discussion. Participants will feel free to speak up, if there is something that makes them feel uncomfortable, and ask and answer questions that will allow them to get to know each other on a deeper level.

6. Try to reflect diversity in the communication we are creating

Three young slim, smiley and white people jumping: this is one of the most common pictures used to advertise youth activities. While awareness on the importance of diversity in visual communication is increasing, there is still space for improvement. When we plan an activity, and we prepare a poster to promote it, we should reflect on how to make it more diverse, and try to include visual representations of people from underrepresented groups. We should reflect not only on the representation in pictures, but also consider what kind of message our visual materials bring, and avoid pictures where people from underrepresented groups are shown in a powerless position.

7. Include anti-racism in the policies of your organisation

It is highly recommended that the above-mentioned practices – among others – are reflected in the policies of our organisations. Doing so, first of all, is a statement that anti-racism is embedded in the core values of our institution.  It will also help us to ensure the continuity of action. Let us say you are proactive in mainstreaming anti-racism and trained to do it, so you do not see the need to formalise it. But then what will happen if you decide to change your job, and a new person comes?

Having anti-racism reflected in your policies might provide you with a standardised response in case of racist incidents might happen within your organisation or during activities with young people.

Definitely, there are many more things that could be done, and this list rather serves to start reflecting on including anti-racism in our activities. As for concrete actions we can as well suggest observing the international days connected with anti-racism, for example 21st of March – the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Or we can use our social media to share content by people of colour, or start following people working on this topic in our communities and, through this, keep raising awareness and give a credit for their work. All the actions, even the ones that seem small, count, and in this way, step by step, we can keep on contributing to a society that is more equal, and create the new normality, where people from underrepresented groups are visible, acknowledged, appreciated, and powerful.

Empowering and engaging minorities

Anti-racist work with young people (and in general) does not make much sense without engaging and empowering those who suffer the most from racism. Even if our anti-racist educational activities are mainly targeting representatives of the majority – because as a rule they are best positioned to both perpetuate and benefit from racism – we still need to make sure we do not leave communities behind in this process. First, racism can only be fully understood when the experiences of those who suffer from it are given proper space and their voice is heard. Second, because of their vulnerable situation, young people from minorities should be better equipped to react whenever they witness or suffer racism, and also have the courage and the support systems to do so. Third, engaging young people from minorities communities in our educational activities normally results in intercultural dialogue, deconstruction of stereotypes and prejudice and building trust among communities, all of which are in turn contributing to an antiracist environment. Finally, due to the broad take we have on racism (i.e. not only limited to skin colour, but making references to other types of oppression), allows us to open a conversation about the situation of ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, people with disabilities, women etc. in various communities, where such conversation might be very much needed.

Who are minorities?

For linguistic reasons, we often define a minority as a social group which is smaller in number in comparison to another social group – majority. However, this can be very misleading and in social science other approaches have also been taken. In our view as well, what determines a minority group from the majority is not their number, but their limited access to power (see sub-chapter on power). Access to power is usually linked to how big the group is, but not always. One sad example is the apartheid in South Africa, where for decades a group that was much smaller in number (white people were estimated to be 20% or less during the time) has practically full power and thus suffered no minority-related exclusion whatsoever. Women, who usually represent a bit more than half of the population, are traditionally suppressed in their access to power – even if they have the numbers, they do not have the power. Finally, let us take the perspective of wealth: according to Oxfam’s inequality report (January, 2020) the world’s 2153 billionaires have more wealth than 4.6 billion people who make up 60% of the population on Earth. Even if very small in number, this group of people has unprecedented access to power and thus cannot be considered a “minority”.

In the European context, and particularly in the context of our STAR initiatives, minorities will then be black, brown and other non-white people, ethnic and religious minorities, refugees and migrant groups (including second and third generation), LGBTI people, people with disabilities among others. Gender equality remains a transversal issue as there are still gender-related oppressions in place in our societies.

Barriers for minorities to engage in youth and antiracist actions

Youth work has been repeatedly called to improve its outreach and work with minority communities, even if youth workers are often not properly trained and equipped with tools to do so. However, if youth workers and youth trainers and facilitators are to better engage in antiracist education and action, they also need to reflect on how to better engage young people from minorities in the process. This is easier said than done and we will try to give at least some practical directions in the process. The first step however is to always consider what might be the barriers that young people from minorities communities might face to engage in youth antiracist initiatives. These are well summarised in How to Engage with Ethnic Minorities and Hard to Reach Groups. Guidelines for Practitioners (Parnez, T., 2005, p.1):

[Minority groups] may experience language difficulties, difficulties in accessing information, they may think that service-providers do not care about them, do not listen or even are irrelevant to them. On the other hand, it has been recognised that on the side of service-providers there is often limited or ineffective interaction between the different stakeholders, limited knowledge of multicultural guidance and education, lack of resources, political uniformity and restricted funding that result in lack of suitable services.

As hinted by this quote, engagement is a two-way process, but the burden of it is in youth workers, organisations and bodies, as we are in the power position to take measures and try our best to overcome these barriers.

Case-study: the Antiracist Wave in Bulgaria

Within the framework of the STAR project, Bulgarian partner Pro European Network undertook an initiative called The Antiracist Wave in the period of November 2019 – January 2020. It consisted of three parts: 1) two-days launching seminar, open for young people and youth workers from across the country to prepare the Wave; 2) A series of youth-led community events, organised by the seminar participants in their own communities; 3) Reporting and evaluation seminar. The call for participants was announced through the website and the Facebook group of Pro European Network and was shared in a number of existing Facebook groups for Roma and young Roma. As a result, two or three of the launching seminar participants (thirty-three in total) identified as coming from the Roma community. This had a significant effect on the following Wave: out of one hundred and nighty-one people who participated in twelve community events across the country, more than half were Roma. The community events had an educational aspect, although in one case they led to action right afterwards. They took place in the premises of local organizations, schools, community, social and cultural centres. In a couple of cases, they engaged young people from communities which are particularly excluded as they are in rural areas and/or there are no active organisations on the ground that had previously worked with them. In other words, the initiative reached people that had not been reached by similar initiatives before, a fact which is assessed as particularly valuable. Overall, the initiative was a big breakthrough in the Roma community.

Engaging minorities

For many organisations, youth workers and antiracist activists the main question is how to reach communities which might seem “hard to reach”, so that we can engage them in our activities. This will of course depend a lot on the specific context, but based on our experience, we would like to provide some overall guidelines on that. In many cases we will be coming back to the presented case study for examples.

- Building trust

It goes without saying, that building trust is an underlaying stone, without which any work with minority communities would not be possible. Since they usually navigate in an environment which is hostile to them, young people from minorities have a good reason not to trust public and private bodies that seek their attention. The process of building trust is long and usually takes years, while it can be broken in just one day. Investing in a long-term process of engagement and trust-building, also proves that we are genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of the minority community rather than taking a tokenistic approach and we seek to engage them because our project has some quota to meet. If we come back to the example above, Pro European Network, as an organization, has spent years working with young Roma in Bulgaria and has gradually built its name as such. This includes being active in public debates on Roma issues, partnering with Roma organisations and Roma leaders and publicly taking pro-Roma positions. As a very practical example, the organisation is active on sharing Roma-related information and opportunities on their social media. The organisation maintains a similar line of action to the LGBTI community and is a vocal supporter of Sofia Pride and other LGBTI campaigns and initiatives.

- Diverse staff

Youth organisations should always strive to provide equal opportunities in terms of employment (or other types of selections, e.g. participants in projects, trainings and exchanges). However, this is even more important when they are actively trying to engage minority communities. Staff members from these communities can both contribute to this process with their personal and professional networks, and in the overall process of building trust. In the case study above, the chair of Pro European Network is Roma himself, while he and other staff members are actively engaged in Roma-related activism, advocacy and empowerment processes. This has supported the outreach of the organization within Roma communities a lot. The organisation also has a record of involving Roma and LGBTI trainers in its educational activities, including the STAR summer schools.

- Targeted outreach

If an organisation has not previously engaged with a certain minority community, announcing its project opportunity on its regular information channels, it will most probably not give results. In such cases we need to do our research and make sure we use communication channels which will actually reach the young people from minority communities. This will include thematic Facebook groups, but it also might make us consider more efforts in offline communication. Finally, even if our outreach strategy is well-targeted, in case trust has not been built, there is still a chance it will not fully work.

- Acknowledge and celebrate culture

There have been many guidelines that advise youth organisations and youth workers to take cultural differences into consideration when planning their activities and events, e.g. do not plan events during Eid the same way we do not do it during Christmas time. However, we can do more than that, not only consider, but acknowledge and celebrate minority cultures in our activities. This will not only allow for intercultural experience for non-minority participants, but will also give a clear signal to minority youth they and their culture are appreciated. When doing so, however, we need to make sure we do not fall into superficial views on culture and/or additional stereotyping. Coming back to the case study, during the launching seminar, Pro European Network facilitators used counting in Romanes (Roma language) when dividing people in small groups; or played Roma music during breaks. In the past, the organization also included a Roma band concert in the cultural program of their seminars.

- Point out to self-interest

While many of the points covered so far can be more generic and can also relate to other spheres, this is a bit more specific to the topic of anti-racism. Suffering the most from racism, minorities have a clear self-interest to engage in initiatives that fight it. However, this might not be consciously recognised by young people from minority communities, which leaves it up to us to point it out in a respectful way. One way to do that is to also acknowledge the contribution of minorities leaders in the past and present in the antiracist movements, as well as of “ordinary” people from minority communities who give voice to their experiences of racism. In the case study presented, it was because young people realised how important the topic is for them, that they stay engaged and moved the process further voluntarily.

Empowering minorities

Engaging young people from minority communities in our antiracist initiatives is a necessary step for their empowerment but it does not lead to it automatically. Neither does training, which is crucially important. Even if we equip young minority leaders with certain competencies, they might not always be in the position to use them in their communities and spread the message and action further for various reasons: lack of confidence, lack of guidance, lack of funding (e.g. to cover some minor costs). We need to have empowerment as a clear mission in planning our action and make sure there are enough measures to reach it. In such a situation empowerment would mean at least three things:

- We need to trust young people from minorities that they can take over the process;

- We need to transfer control from our hands to their hands;

- We need to create a support system that they can use whenever they feel they need it.

If we come back to the case study above, the empowerment strategy is well reflected in the way the Antiracist Wave is structured: young people (many of which represent Roma youth) are the main vehicle of the local community events. They are the ones that decide on the form of the community event and on getting participants to come. However, they relied on some support on behalf of Pro European Network in these forms: written guidelines with possible training exercises and other events; access to consultation and guidance; financial support for room rental, training materials and snacks; evaluation. In a couple of cases, staff members were also invited to participate in community events, but even when they did, they did not take over the process, which remained youth-led. Pro European Network staff acknowledged that some youth minority leaders lacked full preparation to run educational activities on their own, as the two-days seminar cannot be sufficient. Yet, they decided to trust young people that they will do great, and they did.

GLOSSARY

Anti-racism

An active process and practices of identifying, challenging, opposing and eliminating racism by changing attitudes and beliefs, policies, systems and structures so that power is shared and distributed equitably in the society. Anti-racism can be practiced by individuals (supporting antiracist organisations, presenting one’s own belief on social media, participating in antiracist events), organisations/movements (organising various anti-racism actions or campaigns, providing anti-racism education, advocating for policy change) or state institutions (developing and implementing antiracist policies) or other actors, such as media (promoting anti-racism, calling for action). Social movements have always been in the forefront of anti-racism organising sometimes spontaneous actions/events that opposed racism. In most cases there were peaceful events, however, some of which could have taken a very radical or violent approach, especially in cases of gross human rights violations.

Antiracist education

Antiracist (anti-racism) education is one of the most important tools used by organisations, especially youth organisations, aiming at developing people’s knowledge, skills and competences so that they can be more aware of the impact of racism and get involved in action to oppose it.  They also practice it by organising intercultural activities that put people of different backgrounds in contact: this way people become more aware of racism and the impact it has on particular individuals and, therefore, they can be more motivated to take action against racism.

Emotions

According to the book “Discovering Psychology”, an emotion is a complex psychological state that involves three distinct components: a subjective experience, a psychological response and a behavioural or expressive response. Racial emotions often begin to be acquired in childhood as children begin to acquire racial knowledge and experience racial power. However, racial emotions are not only feelings generated within an individual, they are also social. When they emerge, they permeate spaces and people around them. For more, see the article ‘Racism and emotions’ in Chapter 2.

Human rights

Human rights are universal rights that belong to all people only because they are human beings. They proclaim minimum standards for people to live their lives in dignity, which is the source of all human rights.  Human rights have a dual nature: on the one hand, they are moral standards (based on values such as freedom, justice, equality, non-discrimination and solidarity) and on the other hand, they are legal provisions enshrined in human rights documents, such as conventions, covenants or charters.  Human rights regulate the relationships between an individual and the state, which is responsible to guarantee the enjoyment of human rights to all people, e.g. by making laws, creating institutions, or refraining from any action that may be discriminatory. However, due to the dynamic nature of human rights (the world changes and therefore people face new challenges) there are more human rights documents that regulate the relationships between the state and groups of people (collective rights, e.g. rights of minority people). Human rights are based on the principle that the power of the ruler (government) is not unlimited: people have a certain sphere of autonomy that no power can invade; there should be mechanisms that limit the power of the state to protect the rights and freedoms of people, who can also make decisions about the state power (right to assembly and association, right to vote and stand in elections, etc.)

Human rights are:

- Universal - they belong to all people regardless who they are and where they live

- Indivisible - they all have to be guaranteed; the state cannot choose only some of them

- Inalienable - they are always there, and they cannot be taken away (though they may be violated)

- Interrelated - the enjoyment of some human rights depends on other human rights; at the same time the violation of one human right is usually connected with other human rights violations.

Human rights can be civil and political (e.g. right to live, right to a fair trial, freedom from torture, right to marry, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom from discrimination or freedom of assembly and association), social, economic or cultural (e.g. right to work, right to remuneration, right to social insurance, right to health services, right to housing, right to leisure, right to benefits of science and culture). There are also emerging rights: new human rights that appear as the world changes, such as the right to live in a healthy environment or the right to the Internet.

As human rights regulate the relationship between an individual and the state, they can be violated by the state. However, there is the so-called horizontal approach to human rights that explains that human rights can be violated by other people. This may sometimes happen due to the fact that the state did not provide enough protection to people (weak laws and their implementation), e.g. one of the reasons some people use domestic violence may be due to the fact that they know such offences go often unpunished as the laws about domestic violence are weak and it is easy to go scot-free.

The international system of human rights protection includes various human rights instruments on the level of the United Nations (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, The Convention of the Rights of a Child) or other international organisations (such as the International Labour Organisation). On the European level the human rights protection mechanisms are mainly implemented by the Council of Europe (The European Convention on Human Rights). The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg accepts complaints from individuals who feel their human rights were violated on the territory of the state that ratified the European Convention on human rights (one does not need to be the citizen of the state). The European Union uses the term fundamental rights to express the concept of human rights within the specific EU context (Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union).

Intersectionality

The term used to describe the way of understanding and analysing the complexity of human behaviour, the world and people, underlining the fact that people hold different identities, which interact with one another and influence the way we think and act. In relation to racism the term is used to stress the fact that different identities must be seen in relation to one another, for example ethnic origins should be seen in relation to skin colour, age, ability/disability, body type, religion, sexual orientation, gender, etc. Racism is often perpetrated on the grounds of several factors: not only on ethnicity or nationality but also, for example, on disability and gender at the same time.

Invisible racism

Invisible racism refers to harmful behaviours which are considered normal and accepted by society. The line that is drawn between what we all know by racism and what invisible racism is, is a line of tolerance. Some examples of what invisible racism could be telling racist jokes, or avoiding the contact with people coming from a different ethnic group, by simply going to the other side of the street, or deciding not to date a person who is not white. Those behaviours, although not considered harmful by many, can lead to exclusion, anxiety, and influence wellbeing. For more, see the article ‘Invisible racism and microaggressions’ in Chapter 2.

Microaggressions

Microaggressions are brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioural, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, and sexual-orientation, and religious slights and insults that target a person or a group. Main types of microaggressions:

Microassault is the most direct form of aggression, and the most similar to the old-fashioned sexism, racism or homophobia. Microassaults are the explicit derogations that aim to hurt the target groups, make them feel unwanted, threatened, or inferior, and because they have those clear objectives, they are most of the time conscious.

Microinsults are communications that transmit rudeness and insensitivity, often based on stereotypes, and they are very likely to be unconscious. Very often the messages are so hidden that, at first, even the targets are not aware of them.

Microinvalidation are communications or clues that exclude, deny or nullify the thoughts, feelings or reality experienced by certain groups. The best example that can illustrate this type of microaggression is to make someone feel alien in their own land. It is a very common example of microracism, to compliment black people born in the country of the incident, on their very good level of local language.

For more, see the article ‘Invisible racism and microaggressions’ in Chapter 2.

Power relations

These are relationships in which one person has social-formative power over another, and is able to get the other person to do what they wish (whether by compelling obedience or in some less compulsive and even a more subtle way). Power relationships are such social objects in which power is operative by the nature of the relationship; usually this combines a measure of authority with formative ability to have a desired effect on the other person. For more, see the article ‘Racism and power’ in Chapter 2.

Symbolic power

The concept of symbolic power was first introduced by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to account for the tacit, almost unconscious modes of cultural/social domination occurring within the everyday social habits maintained over conscious subjects. Symbolic power accounts for discipline used against another to confirm the individual's placement in a social hierarchy, at times in individual relations, but most basically through the system of institutions, in particular education. Also referred to as ‘soft power’, symbolic power includes actions that have discriminatory or injurious meaning or implications, such as gender dominance and racism. For more, see the article ‘Racism and power’ in Chapter 2.

Privilege

Privilege refers to a set of unearned benefits or hidden advantages given to people based on their specific social group membership. Society grants privilege to people because of certain aspects of their identity like race, class, gender, sexual orientation, language, geographical location, ability, and religion, to name a few. For more, see the article ‘Racism and power’ in Chapter 2.

Race

Oxford dictionary defines race as “each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics”. Furthermore, as affirmed by Janine Young Kim in “Racial emotions and the feeling of equality”, there is a broad consensus that race is a social construct. This implies that race is not purely cognitive but also imbued with emotional meaning.

Racism

Racism is a belief or doctrine that states that distinctive human characteristics, abilities, etc. are determined by race and that there are superior and inferior races. It can be any attitude, action, institutional structure or social policy. There are different theories that question the concept of race itself, therefore the concept of racism can be applied to other forms of beliefs which divide groups into superior and inferior (e.g. based on ethnic origins, gender, sexual orientation, ability/disability, etc.)

Color-Blindness

Racial or color-blindness reflects an ideal in the society, in which the skin color is insignificant. As a concept it played an important role in the international anti-discrimination movements in the 1950s and 1960s. Colorblind racism is the belief that racism is no longer a problem and that we all have equal opportunities. People who subscribe to colorblind explanations claim they do not see the color of people´s skin and believe that everyone is equal. By not seeing or acknowledging that there are races, one cannot see and acknowledge racism either. Therefore, living in the world with the systemic racism, and a lot of internalized and unconscious biases, being colorblind becomes a challenge to the fight against racism.

White privilege

White privilege is the absence of the consequences of racism: absence of structural discrimination, absence of your race being viewed as a problem, (…) absence of ¨less likely to succeed because of my race¨. White privilege is the unearned, mostly unacknowledged social advantage that white people have over other racial groups simply because they are white.

This manual was created within the context of a long-term international initiative called ‘Stand Together Against Racism – STAR’ which was implemented in Spain, Italy, Poland and Bulgaria in the period 2017-2020 with the fi nancial support of the Erasmus+ programme.The project allowed partners from these four countries to share their best practices in working with young people on the topic of racism and put forward the idea of invisible racism. It allowed four partner organizations to co-create a number of educational tools and use them with direct engagement with thousands of young people in the framework of eight summer camps, over fi ve hundred school workshops and eighty community meetings. This manual is widely based on this local level experience.We also created a Massive Open Online Course which is available in English and Spanish for self-paced learning on www.youth-mooc.eu and we are maintaining a thematic website www.invisible-racism.eu

Notes

[←1]

https://deadline.com/2019/09/inclusivity-diversity-representation-marginalized-communities-film-usc-annenberg-inclusion-initiative-usc-stacy-l-smith-1202710100/

[←2]

https://scholars.org/contribution/how-racial-stereotypes-popular-media-affect-people-and-what-hollywood-can-do-become

[←3]

The term was introduced in Psychology in 1966 by the American scientist Richard Lazarus.

[←4]

Proximity: From Latin Proximus = the Nearest. In the sentence we mean closeness, vicinity.

[←5]

Ostrom E. 2007. Governare i beni collettivi. Istituzioni pubbliche e iniziative della comunità, Marsili editore.

[←6]

Messia F., Venturelli C. (a cura di).2015. Il welfare di prossimità Partecipazione attiva, inclusione sociale e comunità, ed. Erickson.

[←7]

Appadurai A. 2011. Le aspirazioni nutrono la democrazia, Etal edizioni srl, Milano.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

TOPICS

Stereotypes and prejudices

Hate speech

Invisible racism and Microaggressions

Racism and power

Racism and emotions

Good Treatment

Bingo

Cat and mouse

Diamond

Four corners, four emotions

(Untitled)

Good Deed Mailbox

Good Deed Online

Good Treatment

How far would you go?

Innocent pictures, innocent words

Invisible racism in my life

Is this a microaggression?

Musical chairs

(Untitled)

Other treatment?

Pink triangle

(Untitled)

Power and candies

Pyramid of racism

Racism in motion

Racism or not?

See

The network

Who is who?

APPROACHES

Community work

Peer education

Mainstreaming anti-racism

Empowering and engaging minorities

(Untitled)

GLOSSARY