Preventing Hate Based on Mental Health or Substance Use: Read Our Submission
Content Warning: The submission includes examples of hateful comments found online. Please see our content warning for further information as well as resources that may be useful after going through the document.
Health Justice has made a submission to the BC Human Rights Commissioner’s inquiry into hate incidents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Below is a quick introduction to the submission that has been taken from the submission itself.
Public debates about community perceptions of and supports for people experiencing mental health and substance use-related disabilities and/or homelessness existed well before COVID-19, including debates that frame people directly experiencing these issues in stereotypical or discriminatory ways. The pandemic has only increased tensions in public debate related to these issues, including rhetoric that targets people experiencing mental health and substance use-related disabilities and/or the social condition of homelessness and fit the Inquiry’s definition of “hate incidents.”
It’s hurtful and dehumanizing to see people saying these things in a flippant way. It’s disguised as the language of care – that we’re trying to take care of people. But care is relationship and community. It’s not treating people as less than human or putting them behind closed doors.
- Health Justice Lived Experience Experts Group
We may feel reluctant to frame this public rhetoric as hate given that some comments appear to be made with the intention of helping people who experience inequity. However, regardless of intention, we must learn from the impacts of the pandemic, including how they have mirrored deeply entrenched and longstanding structural discrimination. Doing so is necessary to take meaningful steps to uphold the human rights of people experiencing mental health and substance use-related disabilities and/or homelessness.