A powerful act - an applicable lesson to today
By Amelia K. Barwise, MB, BCh, BAO, PhD
As we struggle to honor “the moral determinants of health” with patchy responses to the medical and economic consequences of COVID-19 we should remind ourselves of the potential role we can play as individuals in addressing and mitigating health inequity and structural racism. Just as pandemic fatigue has become ubiquitous, accumulating societal issues can seem insurmountable and too complex for us as individuals to overcome and dismantle.
Can individuals contribute to the prevention and destruction of structural racism and help those less fortunate in society to receive equitable health and healthcare? Action is challenging and our ability to deliver meaningful change as proactive, engaged individuals can seem daunting if not impossible to achieve. We may hope that someone else somewhere has the know-how to fix these issues. This is what I think is missing in the current national conversation. Most of us acknowledge the evidence about widespread inequality articulated by reporters, academics and thought leaders. However documenting realities alone may bring about awareness but does not produce change or at least lasting change. Perhaps we can do more, acting as small cogs in a system that might just obstruct the machinery enough for a much-needed repair to be initiated.
I want to present the argument that much as “othering” has helped build and conserve structural elements that discriminate against people of color, “othering change makers” is also dangerous and leads to inaction and perpetuation of the issues many of us want to see changed and contribute to changing. I am aspiring to become an antiracist and understand more deeply the inherent unfairness of multiple aspects of our social fabric but I also want to go beyond educating myself to actualizing change.
The story of the Dunnes stores strikers is an inspiring example of courage and change from 30 years ago. This small group of Irish people helped campaign for radical structural change to promote equality in South Africa. From the late 1940s until the early 1990s, overt structural racism in the form of apartheid persisted in South Africa. Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial segregation with Whites largely separated from Blacks in many social settings. It was similar to the segregation that existed in the South until the 1960s.
The Dunnes Stores workers went on strike from 1984-1987 demonstrating their objections to South Africa’s apartheid. The strikers were young adults in their late teens and early 20s who worked as cashiers in a supermarket chain in Ireland. They led a boycott of South African food, refusing to handle South African products, suffering terrible personal consequences including losing their jobs during a recession, being arrested when they travelled to South Africa, and being ostracized by much of the public as well as their former co-workers for the almost 3 years of the strike.
The following are three key take-aways about the strikers’ brave and selfless actions:
The predominantly female Dunnes Stores strikers were not ethicists and they had no experience in scrutinizing the ethical implications of policy, they simply recognized right from wrong. Furthermore they were prepared to stand up for those less fortunate and uphold principles they valued. As Karen Gearon, one of the strikers simply stated “We were just ordinary everyday people standing up for what was right”. The Dunnes Stores strikers’ actions eventually propelled the Irish government to ban the importation of South African products, a policy that other countries adopted thereafter. As international condemnation of apartheid mounted apartheid began to crumble. The strikers’ courageous stance was acknowledged by both Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela as making a substantial contribution to the eradication of apartheid several years later. Furthermore Mandela cited their action as inspiring hope within him during his prolonged incarceration.
The Dunnes stores strikers were geographically distanced from apartheid’s cruelty, did not suffer from the effects of apartheid and in fact did not even witness apartheid directly. They learned about apartheid from the media. Once they realized the significance of their actions they doubled down despite the hardship. The knowledge that apartheid was causing widespread suffering to the more than 70% of the population who were Black, likely at least 30 million people, (although census data was inaccurate) compelled them to act and play a role in changing history.
It’s also important to note that the Dunnes Stores cashiers were not in any way the root cause of the structural oppression, had no role in the creation of the policy, nor its regulation. The products they refused to touch were far downstream from the underlying foundations of apartheid’s racism and the mechanisms that helped maintain it. The strikers nonetheless identified and established their task as creating a ripple that contributed to transformational change.
This story, which I was recently reminded of, has given me cause to reflect. I hope it will motivate others to see themselves as able to play a role and lean on whatever “powers that be” they can. The time for waiting for someone else to resolve the structural racism and health inequity faced by many in this country is not time well-spent. Instead we should try to become actively engaged in transforming our social paradigms — we don’t need to be as brave as the Dunnes Stores workers or make the same enormous personal sacrifices but we do need to show persistence, creativity, and compassion and expect and want more for those less fortunate. Let’s not get overwhelmed and succumb to inertia, let’s take some ownership in implementing change.
Amelia K. Barwise, MB, BCh, BAO, PhD is an assistant professor and research associate in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the Mayo Clinic Rochester. Her research focus is disparities in end of life care among patients with limited English proficiency.