The Disliked
25-05-2009

Preben Brandt, president of projekt UDENFOR and the president of The Board of Socially Marginalised People, writes about the ostracism of the socially exposed in the Danish newspaper “Berlingske Tidende”. The article was published on January 5^th 2009.

“How does our society treat people who are marginalised -  those who are not like us? I think this is a relevant question to ask in the New Year 2009.

During 2008 I read more than enough about infringements and evictions. I can state that a continuously rising number of persons and families are evicted from their residences.

A hotel in Vesterbro in Copenhagen refuses to rent rooms booked in advance to a group of people, members of an association of homeless people, only because one of them is visibly marked by a chemo-therapeutic treatment.

In the same part of town a group of citizens are provided with an emergency telephone number to call the police directly if they see a drug addict buying drugs. In that way the police can intervene at once and remove the undesired person.

In another municipality a group of citizens start an aggressive campaign to have 3 small houses removed from their neighbourhood, because they were designed to house the socially exposed.

The municipality of Copenhagen closes a residential and drop-in centre for young homeless people, who have heavy psycho-socially related problems. The reasons for doing this are rather intricate and inscrutable but the real motif might be that the centre does not look like anything people know.

In a shopping centre the guard personnel beat up and threaten a young immigrant boy, because maybe he has been forbidden to come there.

Each story is easily forgotten by those of us who are on the safe side and live quite normally. But put together these stories tell us that for the time being we really react when some people we dislike show up in our territory. This concerns the immigrants who do not integrate quickly enough and those who are different in some other ways and do not fit in according to our ideas of a good citizen.

At a time when the prevailing opinion is that each individual is responsible of his or her destiny in the holy name of individuality, it is far too easy to get away with the brutal form of social ostracism which strikes those who are different. In the end it is their own fault, isn’t it? It forms part of today’s discussion of values in expressions like “everybody who wants to work, can find work” “and the social cohesion must be strengthened.”

It is more difficult to find viewpoints which express attitudes about the importance of embracing those who obviously cannot work and those who do not fit into the nice society.

It seems to be quite acceptable that a hotel refuses persons who might make some guests staying at the hotel feel uncomfortable or to have the attitude that you will not risk a fall in price on your house because some people who are different want to move into the neighbourhood.

Actually, I have heard it said lots of times that money constitutes the principal social value. Actually I have heard it so many times that I almost consider it an indisputable truth – but is it really so?

Another explanation of our need to get rid of those who differ from us might be found in our violent, over dimensional need of security and niceness. It is both legal and easy to agree that it is unacceptable that there are tenants in a housing association who don’t do as the rest of us do. If they are noisy, messy or can’t pay their rent because they have been made poor, the notice to quit is imminent and we find it both reasonable and just.

It is my impression that in a goal oriented way we make use of two well tried out methods to control those who are different, even if we know very well that they are both ineffective and useless precisely because they are often used and well tried out.

Those who have the power to not only formulate and present the values but also to make them into laws tell us that more control and more severe sanctions are needed in order to secure the safety of the good citizen. It is easily forgotten in the service of the good cause that this implies a demonisation of the young immigrant boy, the homeless, and the psychotic when they overstep the mark of good behaviour.

Beside punishment stand treatment and education. Both pretty good and reasonable elements in a healthy society when they are used for what they were created for, that is to say bringing up our children treat illnesses and other defects. But it is violence against both to use them as tools to normalize those we consider as different. I need scientific documentation telling me that this kind of effort works and is not just easy solutions and infringement.

Is it absolutely certain that the young people who seek the drop-in centre, which the Social Welfare Committee has decided to close, will get better if they are forced into treatment in a psycho therapy which on the whole is based on psychopharmacological drugs? Does this help the young people with psychic problems and abuse who have also experienced abandonment during their upbringing not only by parents but by authorities as well because these are overstretched with child cases in proportion to personnel resources?

Or is it absolutely certain that the young man with a foreign background, who has had difficult problems during his growing up and who is now well on his way into a criminal career, will improve just by being punished and treated again and again?

In this way I could ask the same questions in all relations concerning ostracism and eviction and also answer that these methods do not work, on the contrary, but we choose them because they correspond to the prevailing system of values.

The unclean, using an anthropological expression, are what they are, but we by the language we use, we push them into a marginal, undesired position and give them the blame.

For the time being you must search for a long time to find signs showing a vision of an embracing and broadminded society assuming its part of the responsibility.  

Pour lire ce texte en francais – cliquez-ici

Preben Brandt