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Racism & Sexism
A lot of folk want to pretend that prejudice and discrimination toward people belonging to labeled groups doesn't exist, that racism and sexism are things of the past. If you can believe that we really live in a place where everyone has an equal opportunity, that's only because you live a life with the accidental privileges of being born white or male or rich. In general (yes, of course there are always individual cases that are different), you get treated better and you're given more opportunities if you're any of these things. It's like having a foot race and the starting line is different for everyone. Some start out way ahead of others-not because they're smarter or wiser or kinder or better in any way than the others, but simply because they were born with certain things this society favors because of prejudices; it's rarely an advantage these people personally achieved. I had a class recently where my (white) students would often argue that racism was long gone; the Civil Rights movement had changed all that. The students of color knew better, but one (black) student would always remain quiet during these discussions. Toward the end of the semester, students were giving speeches and this guy, for the first time in his life, publicly talked about being held down and cattle-branded by the Klan as a boy. He courageously showed the horrendous mark on his upper arm as tears ran down his face. Do you think he was "whining" or playing "victim"? Do you think there would've been no criminal charges against the perps if this guy had been white? If so, it's time for you to wake up. Just because your life is one kind of experience—maybe you don’t personally get followed and watched in stores, stopped and harassed by cops, have taxis pass you by— that doesn’t mean other people don’t have other kinds of experiences. Try to remember that what you know from your own life is not the sum total of all human experience. I personally think that if we're looking at oppression across the world, females as a group (again, of course there are always individual exceptions) have been discriminated against the most. Infant girls are killed because they're not as "valuable" as males. Girls and women can't vote or work or go to school. There are still places in the world where if a woman gets raped, her family has the legal right to beat her or even kill her for "dishonoring" the family. In this country, nine out of ten females don't feel safe enough to report it if they're raped. Women make less than $.75 to a man's dollar in the US. The government wants to be able to tell women what to do with their own bodies. My grandmother couldn't even vote in her early twenties for one reason: she didn't have a penis. The way she was treated as a female in society affected her a lot, I think, and made her emotionally screw up her own children, whose own children . . . well, you know how that goes. Let's not get too personal here. Bottom line? Long after laws change, people still carry the mental and emotional prejudices of their societies. When you recognize these things going on, fight them. Challenge yourself as well as others. —Gail
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 Changing the World One Page at a Time  |
