Someone made the grave mistake of telling me that, because I am “white”, I just can’t know certain things; I can’t know what it is to experience discrimination, or poverty, or poor access to education, or any of the difficulties or challenges in life.
Big. Mistake.
Suffice to say I am not impressed with people who cannot get it through their heads that you don’t eliminate a problem by granting it space in your worldview and that, yes, actually, pretending that somehow, allowing the color of someone’s skin to MEAN ANYTHING is precisely granting that concept space in which to flourish and grow.
Honestly…. how many of us DID NOT learn this lesson on the frakking playground? “If you give something attention, it grows. If you want to see it disappear, ignore it.” I find it utterly preposterous to think I should be granting something credence and credit in my mind or life for no other reason than that “everyone else is doing it”. (Didn’t we learn about this one in kindergarten, too?)
This individual told me that I “had to” acknowledge and accept the “social concept” of “race” because everyone else does. That, because this is “social reality”, it must be acknowledged and incorporated into my reality. I wonder if they would also say that ANY “social reality” deserves that kind of acknowledgement and support? (Can you see where that path leads? Do you REALLY want to go there?)
What offends me is the idea that someone, ANYONE actually thinks that the color of ANYONE’S skin has a THING to do with who they are, what they can or cannot know or have experienced, what they experience as their day to day reality, or ANYTHING more than how heredity decided to balance the pigmentation.
What offends me is how people use misconceptions like “race” to leverage their personal interests against the greater societal whole; often perpetuating the very problem they claim they wish to see solved because they want “their own back” or pretty much anything except unity and equality.
What offends me is that “getting my turn” is more important than getting off the frakking carousel.
Point: The waves of cultural discrimination are equally high in every culture and to pretend this is not so is the very thing that ensures the entire mess continues to swirl.
No, you do not eliminate something by continuing to acknowledge it, you eliminate something by refusing to acknowledge or support it’s existence no matter where, when, or how it raises its head.
The answer to the problem isn’t “continue to acknowledge the problem, let it change your choices and behaviors to adjust for it’s presence and then, hope that somehow, it magically goes away.”
The answer to the problem is “refuse to grant the problem any space in your life, your head, or your thoughts other than to reject it outright and call it what it is no matter what color the propagator’s skin is, because anything else is water on a plant; nourishment and insurance of longevity.”
There is only one race, the human race. Color is not nor can it ever be a relevant element in the discussion of equality or unity. The crux of the issue is mutual respect of cultural differences and creating a place for them in the greater societal whole. Anything else is distraction, diversion, and ultimately, to foster continued division.
Do I expect to make others hold this view? Pfft. Of course not. But then, I don’t spend much of my time trying to be responsible for others. I am responsible for myself; believe me, that’s enough to have to deal with…. besides, if I truly commit myself to this and fully enact it in my life, then I’m one more person creating unity and equality in the world and that’s one less person to convince or convert.
Let’s just say that the more people who truly have this mindset, the faster the problem goes away.