City of God

Synopsis: This movie was set in Rio de Janeiro. It tells the stories of children who are living in poverty. They have been displaced due to their colonial masters. They continue to live in a land where divide and conquer tactics are evident, fighting against their own people to get power. There are clear indications of a continued colonialism in this movie. The movie is filled with violence, tears, suffering, but also laughter, resiliency, and hope. When we in the west speak of Brazil we speak of the tourism we have experienced or our family and friends have experienced. We speak of the weddings we throw at these exotic lands, the partying, and the fancy hotels. We forget to see the reality of what is happening, we forget to ask ourselves why are nations living in poverty? The first clip shown above illustrates how Brazil will be transformed by the Olympic games set to take place in 2016. The second clip is a scene from City of God.

In the movie City of God one of the character’s states “For the rich and the powerful our problems don’t matter, we are too far removed (Ribeiro & Meirelles,2002).” This quote holds true both historically and in society today. Kondrat speaks of “structuration” and how “persons as selves and identities are shaped, sustained, and modified by the structures and practices of their socializing communities (Kondrat, 1999).” We are shaped by structures that rule us, these structures include community groups, educational institutions, religious organizations, workplaces, government systems etc. The institution practices that are imposed upon us create knowledge which we take in, and in doing so we may oppress other groups by believing this knowledge as truth. Foucault states “knowledge produces formulations of truth , we come to see things in a particular way (Foucault, 1999).” As we grow up in school system’s we are taught that Canada is a country of peacekeepers, that the west has liberated other nations, and we learn about Darwinism and the notion of “survival of the fittest”. We are not taught about why countries in the world are oppressed, their histories, and their lived experiences. So when we look at Brazil we think it is their problem they are oppressed, we think it is their government that is corrupt, their police forces that allow continued oppression to their own people, we pity them, feel sorry for their stories but we don’t really know them or the reality of what globalization is doing to the rest of the world.

In critical social work practice it should be our duty to learn about issues that surround our client’s lives, and we also need to know their lived experiences in order to be a helping agent. If we block ourselves up from their lived histories, and what role we have played in their oppression then we cannot truly help clients. The clients Safehaven served came from all backgrounds, their stories were all different, and their lived histories were unique. Within the program these girls were only numbers, their histories were written from a biased eye, never taking into account their real lived experiences. They were labelled, categorized, and lumped into groups. Their numbers were so incredibly important to us so we could attain funding, if we had no numbers we would have no funding. The story of their parents being thrown into residential schools and continued oppression they faced today was never heard. The fact of the matter was that these girls were in their displaced position for specific reasons and due to historical experiences they had. Many of the young girls I came into contact with were Aboriginal, about seventy five percent of our clients came from an Aboriginal background. The families of these young girls were seen as dysfunctional, and their parents were seen as “bad” parents. Many of their parents had experienced the impact of the residential school system, they were robbed of their histories, language, family relations, faith, and culture. We need to describe residential school systems for what they were which is “cultural genocide”.

Both the children in City of God and the young girls in the Safehaven program are misunderstood. They are misunderstood because we fail to see their lived histories and experiences. We fail to acknowledge historical oppressions which continue to exist and cause marginalized groups to remain where they are. We also refuse to educate marginalized groups and empower them to advocate for themselves, because we feel as social workers it is not our role to do so. Critical social work practice is encouraging of social workers change agencies they work in, and transform the agencies. Foucault states “transformative knowledge is disturbing by nature; it disturbs acceptable ways of doing and disturbs the person implementing it, it is serious and dangerous work (Foucault, 1999).” Transforming an agency will never be easy, it will never be simple, breaking down historical systems of oppression that have been around for many years can never be an easy task. But does that mean that we as critical social worker’s should not take the leap? If we refuse to take the leap than how are we genuinely helping our clients. If we sit back and allow our clients to be numbers, to be written on like a blank slate, to be oppressed further and educated about their social problems in such a way where “they” are the problem we are failing them. The only way to create transformation is to fight the structures that implement oppression and free ourselves, and our clients from the chains of bondage. It doesn’t only stop when we fight against institutionalized practices we also have to put into practice what we preach in our one on one relationship with our clients. We have to not only be able to hear their stories, we have to see where we fit into their stories. How have we oppressed them? What privileges do we have over them? How can we help our clients re –tell their stories? And how can we educate our clients and create new discourses and help our clients create new discourses. The only way to fight against written words and discourses that stereotype marginalized groups is with words as Patricia Hill Collins stated in her book “Fighting Words with Words”. In her book Fighting Words, Collins states in discourse we can find beliefs about Black people, the discourse uses language to illustrate Black sexuality, criminality, stupidity, laziness, street crime, drug dealers, welfare queens etc (Collins, 1998, p. 82). For Collin’s a way to fight back against this oppression is to study discourse according to their structure, organization and thematic content, and also the external factors such as the creators, recipients, social, cultural and political settings (Collins, 1998, p. 82). As a critical social worker it is important to me to fight back words, because words define who we are. We are obligated to follow laws that are worded in a particular manner, our legislations, policies, mandates etc all involve a language that has been created by a dominant power. We cannot follow these words blindly without questioning what they mean, and how they have shaped who we have become to be. We also have to be aware of the idea of a client being the “expert”, a member of a marginalized group may know something “different than what a member of a majority group” may know (Kondrat, 1999).