Johnson (2006) addresses that the root of problems of inequality is not due to difference but due to privilege and power. He states that “[t]he trouble [around diversity] is produced by a world organized in ways that encourage people to use differences to include or exclude, reward or punish, credit or discredit, elevate or devalue, leave alone or harass” (16). Thus, differences are socially constructed. To illustrate this point Johnson gives the example of a “black woman” in Africa not thinking or experiencing herself as black because she has not been exposed to white racism. However, if she travels to the United States or anywhere else afflicted with white racism, she becomes black, is assigned to a social category, and is consequently treated differently (17-18).
This concept of difference is very closely related to the concept of normality. The dominant or privileged group has the power to determine what is “normal” and what is not among the observed differences. Whatever they deem “normal” is assigned prestige while whatever is not is assigned a stigma. That is not to say, though, that any time there are differences one must be given prestige while the other be given a stigma. Such are the cases regarding height and vision that Johnson mentions (19). The dominant group has not proscribed
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Freire (2011) discusses how humanity comprises certain qualities such as understanding, freedom, and integrity. He states that only humanization itself cannot acknowledged but that dehumanization must also be recognized. Dehumanization is when a person’s humanity has been taken away from him or her and then s/he becomes the oppressed. The oppressors have an “unrestrained eagerness to possess” and that for them “to be is to have” (58). They must have constant control over the oppressed despite leaving them with very little or even