Anatomy of Discriminatory Behavior

Euroclub is a youth organization founded in Kvareli, Georgia in support of the EU Regional Communication Programme “EU NEIGHBOURS east” which implements a new project “Activism Film Club”, that is sponsored by the Open Society Georgia Foundation. Weekly movie screenings and thematic discussions between the invited speakers and participants are organized during the public project.

On October 9, the screening of the film “The Hate U Give” and the discussion “anatomy of discriminatory behavior” was held in the town of Kvareli. The invited speaker was Maia Tsiramua, Clinical Psychologist. Young European Ambassadors from Georgia and Spain, Mariam Paradashvili, Soso Dzamukashvili, Mariam Bitsadze, and Aaron Guerra Gonzalez were part of the event.

Discrimination

Discrimination, a highly sensitive and crucial topic was the major point of the event, the history of discriminatory behavior and its side effects  which influence present and future need to be analyzed and well-learned in order to progress equality of races, nationality, gender. Before we go further, we need to know what is exactly discrimination. In fact, according to dictionaries, the word ” Discrimination ” is the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, sex, or disability. Simply, it is injuring someone’s rights because of what they believe or who they are. Discrimination empowers inequality and it damages as individuals as a whole society. By the same token, each individual has the right to be treated equally, regardless of race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, age, class, belief, sex, gender, language, sexual orientation, caste,  gender identity, health, or other status. However, we often hear unbearable stories of people who suffer cruelty for relating to a ” different ” group from those in positions of dominance or authority.

Contemporary discrimination of racial inequality in employment, housing, and a wide range of other social domains has a foundation in centuries ago. Ideas of inequality, oppressing, hate, and non-acceptance of ” different ” are empowered throughout folk sayings, parables, fairy stories which are generating within generations by the parents, teachers, neighbors. Within centuries by these sayings and stories, the culture of thinking is creating while discrimination could be motivated by stereotypes, prejudice, or racism.

                                                                                    Hate speech                

To begin, Hate speech is any speech that encourages violence or prejudicial action against an individual or group on account of features such as race, gender, age, or disability. It includes insults, discrimination, demonization, dehumanization, and incitement to violence. Nowadays, cyberspace creates a new challenge for it, because in seconds, hate speech can reach thousands of people in the online global community and it may cause serious damages to the target.

As an example, American multinational business magazine Fortune published an article, which says: ” Facebook removed nearly 10 million posts for violating its hate speech policy during the first three months of this year, marking a new quarterly high for such infractions on the social network. ” (May 12, 2020).

Although, in May 2016 The European Commission launched the ” Code of conduct on countering illegal hate speech online ” with Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube to prevent and counter the spread of illegal hate speech online. The official web page of the European Commission shares: ” In the course of 2018, Instagram, Snapchat, and Dailymotion took part in the Code of Conduct, Jeuxvideo.com in January 2019, and TikTok joined in September 2020. On 25 June 2021, LinkedIn also announced its participation in the Code of Conduct. “

Irina Bokova

Irina Georgieva Bokova is a Bulgarian politician and she has been the Director-General of UNESCO since 15 November 2009 and was re-elected for a second term in 2013. She is the first woman to lead the Organization. Although, she opened the commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. In her opening address, the Director-General underlined the value of learning from historical inequalities to build continuing peace: ” We will fight against racism and discrimination by teaching respect and tolerance, by sharing the common history of all humanity – including its most tragic chapters. “