(no subject)
Warning: I'm about to do some hating.
I'm just so frustrated with the sheltered white population of my university, I can't laugh off the absurdity any more.
I firmly believe that every individual is born with the same dignity, and will always be entitled to the utmost respect, no matter what color they are, what religion they practice, who they fall in love with, and so on. And it is true that from a medical standpoint, race does not exist. There is too much diversity within each arbitrary category to make up any sort of boundary. Lovely.
But not every person is treated the same by their government, their peers, the mass media. In extreme cases, young men are beaten to death for being gay, women are raped for showing signs of “lesbianism,” or at least to teach them a lesson for their “feminism.” Orators and teachers are shot for demanding civil rights for all shades of people.
Worse, the majority of cases aren't these extreme heartbreaking incidents. Every day, women in this country are employed at lower salaries, homosexuals are hazed, citizens who appear to be “Muslim,” whatever that means, are verbally and physically harassed.
And blonde young men roll their eyes at me in university classrooms, for being... I don't know. A feminist? A bleeding heart liberal? A Muslim-lover? A member of Gay-Straight Alliance? (It drives people CRAZY not knowing which part of the alliance I am.) I can't even keep track anymore.
Why? Because growing up in vastly Caucasian, upper middle- to upper-class suburbs of Chicago or Milwaukee, as the overwhelming population of this school did, you ingest things like “I'm color-blind” (and not just because you're surrounded by white people, hiyo!), “Racism doesn't exist anymore,” “The Civil Rights Movement is over” and so forth.
Conclusions like this have been reached: All this nation's, and most of the world's, problems of social injustice have been solved, and the good guys came out on top. So why would anyone rock the boat, or exaggerate little discrepancies between minorities?
...God, I wish things were different. But the sad facts are that racism (as is homophobia, mysogyny, etc.) is alive and kicking, even if the notion of race has no foundations in reality. There are correlations between skin color and class, education, income... even nutrition! The way we look interacts with the way we live on a daily basis, and it's simply ignorant to claim otherwise.
The most devastating myth of white upper-class suburbia I have ever heard is that everyone starts off on the same footing, so if everyone works hard, they will be successful (in the monetary sense mostly, but also status kind of way.)
Therefore, if you are struggling, you're just not working hard enough. Sorry. I mean, I'm 4th generation Harvard and all, and my parents were around to force me to attend school as a kid, but whatev. We started off equally.
So not only do most of the students I come in contact with ignore that non-white people have a struggle laid ahead of them since birth, they blame those people for their misfortunes!
So, I want to talk about things like this. I want to talk about racism, today. That's all-in a classroom, at a student organization event... Just talk. And hear what people are taught, and how they interpret what they see. And what they experience, and what they make of the experiences of others.
(Please don't get ahead of me here. I'm not saying government intervention in people's lives is the solution-yes, this is aimed at you, my libertarian readers.)
But somehow, somehow, I always end up being called a reverse-racist, or a hippie, or a communist, or something equally distracting and not constructive.
And that is the point where I break down, vow to become an expatriate, and skip class to write LiveJournal entries. Because something else I firmly believe is that without dialogue, without reconciliation, the oppressed are doomed to become oppressors.
I'm just so frustrated with the sheltered white population of my university, I can't laugh off the absurdity any more.
I firmly believe that every individual is born with the same dignity, and will always be entitled to the utmost respect, no matter what color they are, what religion they practice, who they fall in love with, and so on. And it is true that from a medical standpoint, race does not exist. There is too much diversity within each arbitrary category to make up any sort of boundary. Lovely.
But not every person is treated the same by their government, their peers, the mass media. In extreme cases, young men are beaten to death for being gay, women are raped for showing signs of “lesbianism,” or at least to teach them a lesson for their “feminism.” Orators and teachers are shot for demanding civil rights for all shades of people.
Worse, the majority of cases aren't these extreme heartbreaking incidents. Every day, women in this country are employed at lower salaries, homosexuals are hazed, citizens who appear to be “Muslim,” whatever that means, are verbally and physically harassed.
And blonde young men roll their eyes at me in university classrooms, for being... I don't know. A feminist? A bleeding heart liberal? A Muslim-lover? A member of Gay-Straight Alliance? (It drives people CRAZY not knowing which part of the alliance I am.) I can't even keep track anymore.
Why? Because growing up in vastly Caucasian, upper middle- to upper-class suburbs of Chicago or Milwaukee, as the overwhelming population of this school did, you ingest things like “I'm color-blind” (and not just because you're surrounded by white people, hiyo!), “Racism doesn't exist anymore,” “The Civil Rights Movement is over” and so forth.
Conclusions like this have been reached: All this nation's, and most of the world's, problems of social injustice have been solved, and the good guys came out on top. So why would anyone rock the boat, or exaggerate little discrepancies between minorities?
...God, I wish things were different. But the sad facts are that racism (as is homophobia, mysogyny, etc.) is alive and kicking, even if the notion of race has no foundations in reality. There are correlations between skin color and class, education, income... even nutrition! The way we look interacts with the way we live on a daily basis, and it's simply ignorant to claim otherwise.
The most devastating myth of white upper-class suburbia I have ever heard is that everyone starts off on the same footing, so if everyone works hard, they will be successful (in the monetary sense mostly, but also status kind of way.)
Therefore, if you are struggling, you're just not working hard enough. Sorry. I mean, I'm 4th generation Harvard and all, and my parents were around to force me to attend school as a kid, but whatev. We started off equally.
So not only do most of the students I come in contact with ignore that non-white people have a struggle laid ahead of them since birth, they blame those people for their misfortunes!
So, I want to talk about things like this. I want to talk about racism, today. That's all-in a classroom, at a student organization event... Just talk. And hear what people are taught, and how they interpret what they see. And what they experience, and what they make of the experiences of others.
(Please don't get ahead of me here. I'm not saying government intervention in people's lives is the solution-yes, this is aimed at you, my libertarian readers.)
But somehow, somehow, I always end up being called a reverse-racist, or a hippie, or a communist, or something equally distracting and not constructive.
And that is the point where I break down, vow to become an expatriate, and skip class to write LiveJournal entries. Because something else I firmly believe is that without dialogue, without reconciliation, the oppressed are doomed to become oppressors.