Exploring the paper Kleinman, S. and Copp, M., 2009. Denying social harm: Students’ resistance to lessons about inequality. Teaching Sociology, 37(3), pp.283-293.
Blog two of five, in a series by Dr Chrissi McCarthy.
If you had told me that I was being discriminated against in the first five years I worked in construction, I would have been furious. It’s not even that I would have just thought you were wrong; it’s that I would have been deeply annoyed at you for even raising it.
At the time, I would have believed that I was defending my industry, and that discrimination was not something that happened to someone like me.
- Discrimination was for people who couldn’t hack it.
- Discrimination only counted if someone meant it.
- Discrimination only mattered if I saw it.
Bless my cotton socks.
Seeing something different
When I began reviewing my working life for my PhD, I started to see things in a different light.
I realised discrimination was happening to me every day, at multiple levels.
- Sometimes I saw it, sometimes it happened behind closed doors.
- Sometimes people thought they were being helpful; other times they wanted me gone.
- Sometimes it was because I was a woman; sometimes simply because I wasn’t a man.
- Sometimes people knew what they were doing; other times, they were as in the dark as I was.
It was embedded in the systems, culture, policy, process, and relationships.
I am not exaggerating when I say it was everywhere. And for five years, I insisted it didn’t exist.
Even when it looked like a site manager calling me into his office while he stood there naked.
Not just women, not just construction
This pattern repeats across sectors. I share my story as a woman in construction, because that’s who I was. But I’ve heard the same type of story elsewhere:
- People excluded from social events in charities for their religious beliefs.
- Disabled people in academia punished for asking for reasonable adjustments.
- Black colleagues in the public sector struggling to secure the basic terms of their contracts.
I’ve heard people in each environment excuse the discriminatory behaviour aimed at them.
The mechanisms vary, but the pattern holds.
Why it matters – Recovery and progress.
There are three main reasons I think Denying social harm: Students’ resistance to lessons about inequality helped me make sense of this denial. There are three reasons their work feels vital today:
Keeping individuals safe
When I started to realise the extent of the inequality, my first response was shame.
Why hadn’t I noticed this? Why hadn’t I told people about this? Why hadn’t I stopped this?
I was even asked it directly in a training session, a tall, white managing director had challenged, “Don’t you think you are as much a part of the problem for not raising it?”.
And in that moment, I had felt that I was.
It’s a lot to deal with the experience of discrimination and shame, and Denying social harm: Students’ resistance to lessons about inequality helped me see that my response was sociological, I had been trained to deny harm. Understanding that freed me to think differently.
Helping organisations understand their people
Knowing helped me not only feel okay, but it also helped me understand why organisations often don’t know what’s happening to their people. In short, it’s because if the people impacted don’t know what’s happening to them, organisations are probably not sure either.
Helping organisations understand how people respond to inequality is vital, because whether or not we recognise the behaviour as a harm, the response is usually the same: we burn out, we react against, we isolate ourselves, and eventually we leave. We might not give the right reason, but we still follow our feet. Giving employees a language can help identify a problem to fix.
Helping people understand themselves
It’s important to understand that I didn’t only recognise myself as a victim of harm, but I also noticed myself as someone who had done harm. Not intentionally or maliciously, but in the reproduction of behaviours and ideas that had deeper structural underpinings, ideas that harmed myself and others. Ideas I had no idea were so impactful.
Recognising this in myself helped me recognise it in others. It also helped me understand how people get to where they are and how we can find a different path, which has been the bedrock of my courses. I don’t hold myself up as perfect; quite the opposite, I see my strength as the ability to self-reflect upon my mistakes.
The paper
Denying social harm: Students’ resistance to lessons about inequality, although dated in research terms, published back in 2009, was particularly important to me. It helped me develop as a person, researcher and practitioner. This is precisely why I want to share it with you.
If it compels you to share a story back, that would be wonderful. I honestly believe that seeing our experiences not as failures, but as shared knowledge, helps us move forward.
