The Impact of Stigma

08/02/2011

We put our love where we have put our labor.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882, American philosopher and author

A highlight of the 2011 World Forum on Early Care and Education was the plenary "provocation" by Michael Kelly from Zambia on children stigmatized in because of HIV/AIDS (which can be viewed on the World Forum web site). According to Kelly, children who have HIV/AIDS or whose parents have HIV/AIDS or have died from the disease, report that the hardest thing to deal with among all the resulting hardships is the stigma they are subjected to in their communities.

Kelly observed, however, that stigma (whether based on AIDS or racism) does more damage to the person who does the stigmatizing than to the one who is being stigmatized...

"If I am stigmatized by somebody, it's something outside of me, coming in on top of me. It is hurtful and it is painful — I don't deny it. But it does not belong to me. Whereas if I am stigmatizing, I am doing the dirty work. I am the one from whose heart the poison is going out and spreading to the other person."

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