Caring is not enough

Throughout SOCI288, I found myself not only studying ideology, power, and resistance, but slowly recognizing how deeply these forces have shaped my own life. As a woman from an Arab background, a community worker, and someone who values community, I have often felt a quiet but persistent tension between who I am and how dominant systems expect me to be as a parent for a child in school, at my work, etc.

This course helped me name that tension for what it is—not a personal shortcoming but a reflection of ideological pressure. I now understand how cultural identities are shaped, suppressed, or “fitted into boxes” by invisible systems that preserve existing power structures.

Key concepts such as manufactured consent (Miller & Dinan, 2008), toxic socialization (Sosteric, 2025), and hegemonic ideology gave me the theoretical lens to understand how capitalist and colonial narratives seep into our institutions and daily lives. Learning from movements like Idle No More showed me that resistance is possible, deeply spiritual, shared, and rooted in cultural survival. These insights have enabled me to think more critically about my work in settlement services. Even organizations that advocate for reconciliation may not fully acknowledge the historical or present realities of ongoing oppression. I have observed that the truth about past colonization is often bypassed or not addressed fully. As a result, many immigrants like me remain unaware of the deeper historical context behind the social issues that certain groups experience in Canada as they continue to produce the ideologies they claim to oppose. Through this course, I have critically examined the forces that shape power and inequality and the ideals that guide the world I hope to build for my children, myself and the community work I do. A clarifying point in this journey was my encounter with Alfie Kohn’s “No Contest: The Case Against Competition” (1992). Until then, I had thought that at least in small doses, competition was practical and essential for motivation and success. However, Kohn dismantled that belief, demonstrating that the notion of competition is both needless and profoundly adverse. He argues that competition undermines cooperation, damages relationships, and distorts human values by making us believe that someone else’s success must come at our expense. Ideology helped me understand how competition functions ideologically, not as a neutral or natural force, but as a cultural norm reinforcing inequality and alienation.

Reflecting on my work in community programs, I learned how pervasive this ideology is. I have witnessed families with children who have disabilities competing for limited support hours, seniors contesting for housing placements, and newcomers ranked and evaluated for eligibility in employment services. These are not natural shortages—they result from systemic underfunding and political choices. Kohn (1992) challenged me to ask: who benefits when we accept scarcity as natural? Furthermore, what might our programs look like if they were designed around structural cooperation, rather than individual competition?

In No Contest, Kohn argues that competition undermines cooperation and harms mental health. The constant pressure to outperform others fosters anxiety, low self-esteem, and chronic stress, especially when failure is framed as personal inadequacy rather than a result of structural scarcity

(Kohn, 1992). This course felt especially personal as I reflected on my journey in Canada. Despite years of community-based experience, university certifications, and professional training, I have often felt overlooked in hiring processes or excluded from specific leadership roles in mainstream social services settings. SOCI288 helped me understand that this is not just about degrees; it is about ideological systems that privilege particular identities, especially whiteness. In many agencies, white professionals tend to occupy higher, decision-making positions, while racialized or immigrant staff often remain in frontline or contract roles. This reflects what Kohn (1992) describes as the ideology of competition, where hierarchies are justified as a merit-based system but are shaped by systemic bias and inequality. The results include not only professional marginalization but also chronic stress, self-doubt, and mental health struggles for those constantly expected to “prove” their worth in a system designed not to see them.

Realizing this helps me shift blame away from myself and toward the structures that reward conformity over care and privilege over lived experience. My experience in SOCI288 deepened this shift in perspective. At the beginning of the course, I believed I had a solid understanding of injustice, but that notion was quickly challenged. Reading A Century of Spin (Miller & Dinan, 2008) and No Contest revealed how deeply ideology shapes what we consider “normal,” exposing the hidden mechanisms that uphold systemic inequalities.” Later, learning from the Idle No More movement profoundly developed my understanding, not only of Indigenous resistance but of what authentic solidarity means. As a woman of Arab origin who also stands in solidarity with Palestine, I recognized the deep emotional and spiritual connection between struggles against colonial violence, displacement, and cultural erasure. These are global systems, not isolated events. This journey has profoundly shaped me spiritually. Indigenous epistemologies, with their teachings on sacred responsibility and the circle of life, have shown me that resistance is not just political or moral—it is ancestral and deeply interconnected to relationships. Today, I recognize that genuine solidarity goes beyond mere sympathy. It requires us to listen attentively, question dominant ideologies, and take action with humility and courage to pursue justice. Moreover, the second major shift in my thinking came through reading A Century of Spin by Miller and Dinan (2008), which exposed how public relations functions as a powerful ideological tool. Corporations and governments use PR campaigns to manufacture consent, reframing harmful policies as progress. Toxic industries rebrand environmental exploitation as “economic opportunity,” and government officials portray Indigenous land defence as “public disorder” or “civil unrest.” This manipulation is not random but systematic and aims to make injustice seem normal.

After this reading, I began to see the fingerprints of PR everywhere, even in the branding used by social service organizations. Words like “empowerment,” “inclusion,” or “community engagement” are often used to describe programs that do little to challenge structural inequality. The critical lens provided by this course helped me see how language is used to mask injustice. It also made me more skeptical of mainstream media, like the news I read on the internet, and how the media addresses sensitive topics related to politics or racialized communities. I remembered how news coverage of Idle No More round dances often framed them as traffic disruptions rather than spiritual and political acts of resistance. Realizing this changed how I now approach all media—I ask: Who is speaking? Who is being silenced? Furthermore, what story is being left out?

This course’s most potent and transformative part was learning about the Idle No More (INM) movement. My research for Essay Six opened my eyes to the movement’s spiritual foundations

and its critique of settler colonialism. Ruml’s (2020) work on Indigenous spirituality in the public sphere helped me understand how spiritual teachings are often acknowledged only when they pose no threat to dominant institutions. In social service spaces, we are frequently encouraged to “honour Indigenous traditions,” but this typically focuses on cultural events or historical trauma, not on present-day land theft, housing inequality, or environmental racism.

I once believed that homelessness was solely a result of intergenerational trauma from residential schools, as that was the extent of what I had heard. However, I have come to realize that the issue is far more complex, shaped by ongoing systemic inequalities, intergenerational trauma, and structural barriers that continue to marginalize affected communities. One of the most eye- opening realizations I had in SOCI288 was how Canadian institutions frame reconciliation. For example, land acknowledgments are often symbolic, focusing on the past while rarely addressing the ongoing structural violence Indigenous communities face today. This realization became even more meaningful as I engaged with Idle No More, a movement that highlights the necessity of true solidarity—standing with Indigenous Peoples as they resist not only material injustices but also the ideological systems that erase their laws, languages, and responsibilities to the land. I also felt a deep resonance between INM’s solidarity with Palestine and my experience as an Arab woman. Both movements challenge settler colonial violence, cultural erasure, and land dispossession, reinforcing the related struggles against oppression. Recognizing these parallels has deepened my emotional and political understanding of global solidarity.

**Conclusion ** This course has changed the way I see the world—and how I see myself within it. I no longer accept the language of “inclusion,” “equity,” or “diversity” at face value. Instead, I have learned to ask more profound questions: Who shapes these ideas? Whose interests do they serve? Who is excluded or spoken for rather than heard? SOCI288 demonstrated that ideology is not just studied—it surrounds us, shaping our views on justice, resistance, and those who challenge dominant norms.

My most significant realization is that personal transformation and political awareness are deeply interconnected. Caring is not enough—we must critically analyze the systems we operate within, the narratives we perpetuate, and the assumptions we unconsciously hold. I now feel more committed than ever in questioning dominant narratives in my work and creating space for truth- telling, relational accountability, and systemic change. My learning from Kohn on the ideology of competition, from Miller and Dinan on the manufacture of consent, and from Idle No More on the power of Indigenous resistance has left a lasting imprint on how I hope to walk in the world. The path forward will not be easy. We live and work in systems designed to make us compete, conform, and forget. However, this course reminded me that another way is possible. A way that is more truthful, spiritual, collective, and just. A way that honours complexity and centers lived experience. If I carry forward these teachings with humility, courage, and critical hope, then perhaps I can help create not just safer spaces for people I support—but transformative ones, where people are no longer asked to erase themselves to belong, and where justice is something, we co-create, together.