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Recommended: Oppression and discrimination

The purpose of this essay is to critically analyse the above statement. Firstly, the essay will clarify the distinction between anti-discriminatory practice and anti-oppressive practice and argue whether anti-oppressive is a key principle of youth work. Secondly, the essay will explore how oppression can exist through the use of language and media discourse. Using Thompson’s (1997), Personal, Cultural and Structural (PCS) model the essay critically analyses oppression and then discuss how this analysis is important to practice. Thirdly, the essay will then discuss power differences and inequality in conjunction with other forms of oppressions such as class, gender and race. The terms ‘anti-discriminatory practice’ and ‘anti-oppressive practice’ are often used interchangeably but they have different meanings. Jary and Jary suggest that discrimination can be defined as a process by which an individual or group of people are treated differently or unfairly (2000, p 157). Discrimination can be positive or negative. An example of negative discrimination would be a person being refused to be served in a shop because of their race, gender or sexual orientation. The result of this experience, then becomes the basis of oppression, which can be defined as ‘Inhuman or degrading treatment of individuals or groups; hardship and injustice brought about by the dominance of one group over another’ (Thompson, 1993, p 31). Therefore, anti-oppressive practice allows practitioners to minimize oppression by understanding how their personal values and beliefs may affect their practice. Chouhan (2009) claims that anti-oppressive practice is a key principle of youth work, however, it has often been criticized for being too narrow. Humphries argues that... ... middle of paper ... ...d try to understand the personal factors that might influence young people’s behaviour. The power differences and inequality present at personal, cultural and structural levels will now be discussed. Discrimination, oppression and power are closely related because the least powerful and privileged groups of people such as Black, Asian and some ethnic minorities are treated differently. Weber (1963) defines power as ‘the chance of a man, or a number of men to realize their own will in communal action, even against the resistance of others’ (cited in Haralambos and Holborn, 1995, p 501). In other words, power is an opportunity for a person to do what they like despite of others wishes. One the other hand, Lukes (1974) suggests that power can also be defined as the ability of a person to exercise his/hers power over another person (cited in Cox et al., 1985 p 32).

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