Dealing with Difference

Yesterday’s news included an interview with Phoebe-Rae Taylor, a girl with cerebral palsy from Billericay.

The Essex schoolgirl has landed her first acting role in the new Disney film, ‘Out of My Mind’. Phoebe-Rae plays Melody Brooks a non-verbal wheelchair user with cerebral palsy. In the film, Melody use assistive technology, voiced by Jennifer Aniston.

Speaking about the film Phoebe-Rae said, ‘I think people forget how people with disabilities get treated. Even if they look or sound a bit different – they’re not.’

In West Side Story Tony and Maria are in love, but Tony’s a white American ‘Jet’, Maria’s a Puerto-Rican ‘Shark’.

In the song ‘America’ the Sharks describe their hopes for a better life, but their experience of prejudice and discrimination:

Life can be bright in America
If you can fight in America
Life is all right in America
If you’re a white in America

Prejudice and difference that’s not accepted or acceptable ultimate results in tragic death.

Musing on the way that I deal with difference, I’ve been reflecting on Isaiah’s words: ‘If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness…’

I propose four approaches or stages to ‘Dealing with Difference’.

• Isolation: I point the finger, blame, speak and act maliciously. Discrimination leads to division; the ‘different’ are isolated from me, and I from them.
• Inclusion: I include the ‘different’ – the disabled, the outsider, the addict – those who are culturally, sexually, ethnically, educationally, socially different.
• Identification: As outsiders becomes included, I understand them better and identify with them. The problems of the hungry or oppressed become mine. I discover that I benefit from their insights and gifts.
• Interdependence: Difference isn’t a divider; it’s an asset. I appreciate those I previously thought were different and unacceptable, discovering that we need each other. There’s light in the darkness!