Monday, October 5, 2020

The World In 2020- People taking personal offence to help being offered to a community that does not include them

Most days I am generally resigned to the state of the world and the overwhelming sense of entitlement most people seem to have.

They're everywhere. This is not limited to one Country or State.

Today was one of those days I decided I had to say my piece.

Context:
Someone offering a place / sanctuary to victims of domestic violence in the Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi/ immigrant community in Australia.

Who could possibly find fault in that, you ask? 
Uh.. These. People.

People who basically have not been included because there is a Nationwide Government-funded Safety Net for the majority of them already. And I'm not saying there aren't people who fall through the cracks - I'm saying that this offering to a community in need somehow managed to be taken as a personal afront. 

So here are my thoughts:


As the author said (politely and patiently I might add) , 

"no one person's pain or suffering is comparable, but we must acknowledge the disproportionate number of South Asian / immigrant women who face abuse in their homes."

The responses to the post raising issue about the community she has chosen to specifically support are disappointing to read.

If only people could acknowledge that all our cultural backgrounds and differences play a significant factor in our perspectives.

Helping one community is never intended to negate the needs or traumas of another.

Yes, it would certainly be nice to have something like this available to all the different communities of different genders/race/sexual orientation who suffer from domestic violence - and there already are for a lot of these.

What the author of this post has burdened on her is a need to help à community she feels deeply for and where her insight has allowed her a deep understanding of the extent of trauma rippling through this community.

Again, there is so much that is specific to the South Asian Community that those outside of it cannot begin to understand. Again none of this is being said to negate anyone's traumatic experiences, wherever you come from.
Already I write this response almost certainly expecting backlash and responses from many who take offence. Yet I am hoping that in writing this, people learn to understand that one person's call to help a specific group of people does not equate holding their worth or their traumas above another group or community.

It's like the whole counter-Black Lives Matter movement (all lives matter) . Black Lives Matter was not created to mean Black lives matter *more*. And until you are a black person who has to raise your child in a world where they can be shot for the colour of their skin, you cannot imagine to understand.

Again, it's like people raising issue with Breast Cancer Awareness because "what about all the other cancers".
An awareness of one issue is not to demean all other issues.

So, we can sit here behind our screens and voice discontent at someone who is doing something to help her community (because it doesn't include all the other communities)...


Or maybe.. We can ourselves do something about it and do something to actually contribute to all these other communities that we feel need help.