Stand Up to Stigma

Celebrated AIDS activist and nonprofit CEO Dr. Pernessa Seele demands that it's time to stop stigmatizing others. She outlines a way to move beyond shaming, drawing from experience working in church communities where love is the operating principle. "Stigma" is a simple two-syllable word yet a powerful expression that conjures up a variety of feelings for many people based on an array of social factors. We all have the tendency to sit on our high horses and proclaim how progressive and civilized we've become. However, the reality is that we experience the burden of stigma in the United States in our public and private lives every day. Dr. Pernessa Seele teaches readers that with practical stigma management, beginning with exposing the problems, we can transform the public conversation to be guided by accepting others and reserving our negative judgments. If we are honest and committed to exposing the problems, each of us can vividly see how we privately mark people who are and have been incarcerated, those addicted to drugs, people who live in low-income neighborhoods, same-gender loving people, and individuals suffering from certain diseases. It is in such conversations that we can educate ourselves and engage with others we have stigmatized in the past, ultimately leading us to change our language from a negative outlook to that of inclusion and the mending of social divides. Supported by her wealth of knowledge and decades of experience, Dr. Seele imagines a world that few people can. She envisions that in eliminating stigmas about people different from us, we can change representations in the media, get rid of laws and policies targeting stigmatized groups, and set an example for future generations.