Equality vs Equity cont'd

A lot of my work centres around how to influence the Internet for forces of light rather than dark, how to communicate the 'science' in more powerful ways that engage diverse audiences. Last week I posted on equity versus equality, using a cartoon that someone from my research team showed me. The Dean of Science from Ryerson University replied with a wonderful article critiquing the problem with the graphic displayed in my post. The article is a rich discussion about deficit thinking—an ideology that blames victims of oppression for their own situation. As with the earlier image, deficit thinking makes systemic forms of racism and oppression invisible, for example by concentrating on individual capabilities. I learned so much from this article about my own invisibility thinking, and the graphic to the left may be more powerful, in many ways. The fact that many are marginalized not because their abilities are different but because of poverty, race, accessibility, age and gender, and perhaps even love, is often overlooked by the most well-intentioned.

I am grateful to Professor Imogen R. Coe for sending me this article via the Internet, showing its power for sharing, informing and connecting across many barriers that prevent us from communicating, notably time and place.

Image via http://culturalorganizing.org/