q&a marginalisation

Marginalisation is a term that in its simplest from is known to everyone; to be singled out. Marginalisation can occur in many different situations. Bullying would be the most common term of marginalisation within schools, but it comes in many other forms. Racism, sexism and any other type of discrimination are all forms of marginalisation. The novel ‘The Chocolate War’ by Robert Cormier and the three poems ‘be good, little migrants’ by Uven Loewald, ‘Telephone Conversation’ by Wole Soyinka and ‘Democracy’ by Langston Hughes are all pieces of literature that demonstrate or talk about marginalisation. Through these poems and novel it shall be proven that Marginalisation is not always limited to an individual, instead it can extend to a social group and even a country itself. In this essay the three types of marginalisation will be addressed, individual marginalisation through racism, social marginalisation through groups such as the ‘hippies’ and the marginalisation of a country itself through economic marginalisation of 3rd world countries.

Marginalisation can occur anywhere at any time to anyone. Individual marginalisation is where one person is singled out from a group or community of people for something like being an overweight. One of the most talked about and, unfortunately common, types of individual marginalisation is racism. Racism is something that society has struggled with for many generations. It has been around from the early settlers and has been a problem ever since. The poem ‘telephone conversation’ by Wole Soyinka demonstrates the racism and its problems very clearly. It is a poem about an African man looking for accommodation in either England or America around the time of the 1950’s. The line ‘“Madam” I warned, “I hate a wasted journey – I am African”... “HOW DARK?”’is an example of how African people were marginalised again because of the colour of their skin. In those times, it was hard