(no subject)
So, it’s 100 years since the Titanic sank today. This is going to sound weird, but the Titanic is one of those things that really helped me define my ideals and how I see the world. That does sound weird, right? But I cut my social justice teeth on the issue of the Titanic, and there was really no going back.
When I was a kid, I would get intensely interested in certain historical events for a while and try to learn everything I could about them. I think the first time it happened, it was about the Russian revolution and the execution of Tsar Nicholas’s family. The second time it happened, it was the Titanic. To be honest, I can’t remember how these two obsessions did or did not line up with the release of Anastasia and Titanic, although I am fairly confident the Russia obsession predated the Disney movie.
But, the Titanic. The big story is, of course, that there weren’t enough life boats. That wasn’t what grabbed me about the story. It wasn’t even the “women and children first” thing, although the idea of getting onto a lifeboat without my dad absolutely horrified me. But what struck me as the most horrific, shameful injustice of all was the fact that those life boats left the Titanic not even half-full, because saving no one was better than saving anyone poor. That it didn’t occur to anyone to even let the lower-class women or children into those empty seats, but instead it was judged most reasonable and most prudent to let them die.
When that hit me, I remember so vividly wanting, for the first time in my life, to be able to go back in history and change something. It infuriated me. It does to this day. It’s one thing to give rich people first shot (which, let’s face it - we still do, not that that makes it okay), but to make the institutional decision that when the choice is not between someone rich and someone poor, but NO ONE and someone poor, we still do not choose to rescue the poor… it just hit me square in the face with a staggering force that has resonated through the rest of my life.
So, that’s me and the Titanic. I don’t often think anymore about how or why I ended up where I am in my life, caring about the things I care about and doing the things I’m doing, but it’s with some certainty that I can trace the impulse back to the day I learned about the Titanic and the empty life boats.