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Life Onboard |
LAST UPDATE
June 18, 2006
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| site design imagesparkle.com |
| May 24, 2006 |
Sinead O'Rourke |
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| Sinead O'Rourke wore her traditional barrister attire to her first workshop. |
What does it mean to be British? or Japanese? Who is the foreigner? And is 'foreigner' synonymous with 'criminal?' Guest Educator Sinead O'Rourke has been challenging Peace Boat participants with these questions. An immigrant and refugee barrister from London, Sinead experienced first-hand discrimination and prejudice growing up because of her Irish heritage. She came to realize that the subtle preconceptions people have of others from different backgrounds can lead to outright prejudice. Believing that no one is born with prejudice against others but rather everyone is born with prejudice in favor of themselves, Sinead began exploring how and why discriminations occurs. She found that when people rely on their internal representations, generalizations and old stories to describe the world, they have a tendency to clump together types of people and label them. This unconscious habit can later lead to prejudice and discrimination.
In her daily work, Sinead fights for the rights of immigrants and refugees. In the United Kingdom's most recent election, immigration was the second most important issue among the public. Influenced by negative media attention and the July 7th Bombings, the electorate pushed for increasingly restrictive immigration laws. In 2004, 10,000 asylum applications fell to 3,000 in just 6 months and in 2002, the number of successful asylum appeals fell by 34%. The treatment of asylum seekers have increasingly gotten worse over the years. For example, they face imprisonment if they are stopped with out their papers. On the school playground, children have started to taunt others by calling them “asylum seeker.” |
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| “What does it mean to be Japanese? Or Foreigner?” reads the sign. |
Sinead brought with her several recent newspaper headlines to illustrate the negative image of immigrants portrayed by mass media. One of them read, “Why was a rapist let in to kill our girl?” The article not only condemned the rapist but linked him to his Latvian nationality. “If you had never met a Latvian, what you would you think of them from this headline?” asked Sinead. Participants said that they might assume that all Latvians were dangerous and were not be trusted. The article further outlined that the victim's parents were outraged that the rapist's previous criminal records were not checked before he immigrated to the UK. When in fact, Sinead shared that no immigrant or visitor's criminal record ever checked before entering the UK.
Sinead believes the influence of biased and slanted media can cause individual perceptions to grown into beliefs like “they are not like us because they don't speak our language.” She asked participants to look around the room and consider that they may have more in common with someone who speaks a different language on Peace Boat than their next door neighbor back home. “As long as I am only like my neighbor, I miss the real ability to connect. That connection will stop the violence between two people.” Sinead further explained that when people define themselves individually and in groups they end up doing so by defining what they hate in others—people who are not like themselves. And in so doing extremists groups like the Mafia and the IRA form. |
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| Participants paired off to discover how much or little they had in common with others. |
“In the UK, on July 7th, four British nationals believed that it was only through extreme violence that their voices could be heard. They felt that they were the only ones who were against the[ir government's] policies in Palestine and Iraq. They felt alienated from the majority enough to be able to injure 400 people and kill 52,” shared Sinead. Through various activities she had participants to explore their individual identity, how they relate with others, and how their actions and gestures can include or alienate others. Sinead departed Peace Boat in Tilbury, England, leaving participants with a greater understanding of the importance of looking beyond preconceptions and finding commonality amongst people of seeming different backgrounds. |
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