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A lot of people living with Sickle cell deal with discrimination in these essential areas of their lives. Housing, employment, education, and healthcare. Let’s have a look at what discrimination is.
Discrimination is the act of being treated unfairly due to specific personal characteristics. These characteristics, are protected under various human rights laws, include those related to disability, race, ancestry, place of origin, ethnic origin, colour citizenship, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, and family status.
Discrimination can happen explicitly. I remember decades ago, my manager told me, that he could not promote me because I was not ‘executive material.’ This was not because I was not hardworking, but it was because of Sickle cell. Discrimination can also happen through an action or a rule, or requirement that disproportionately affects members of a certain group. For example, medical tests for a job, would automatically exclude someone living with Sickle cell from the job.
Human Rights Laws are there to protect people against discrimination. The Human Rights Code requires employers and service providers to adjust rules, policies, and practices to accommodate the needs arising from those living with a disease, under their duty of care to accommodate.
Any illness that is a physical or mental condition and limits a person is seen as a disability. In the real world, discrimination can be an employer refusing to hire a person because of their illness, already mentioned above. Or it could be an employer refusing to give an employee time off to go for medical appointments. It could be an employer not promoting a person because of their health or firing a person because of their health. This could also be a school unwillingness to accommodate a child who has Sickle cell by exempting the child from doing physical exercises or not willing to reschedule an exam because the pupil was hospitalised. (And there are many more examples of discrimination in organisations). Racism has been known to shape disability-related discrimination for people living with Sickle cell disease in European countries, right to the point of medical funding and research, compared to other sicknesses not solely identifiable as an African, Caribbean, or Black disease.
If you believe that you might be dealing with discrimination, try and seek emotional support. If you don’t talk to someone about it, you might think that your boss is harsh and allow him or her to continue treating you a certain way. When you talk, it makes the emotional pain of it, less isolating and less intimidating. Seek the support of family members, friends, social workers, and counsellor, as they might be able to help you through the discrimination at work, for example. The next thing is to see for free legal advice, like a citizens advice bureau, who have community free clinics or try and book time to see your councillor/s who also might be able to refer you to more help. Make sure that you write down everything that might be going on with you, as it is possible that you might have to bring your evidence out at some point.
My book – How to Live with Sickle Cell is available for purchase at: www.amazon.com
