I'm writing in startled response to comments posted under Wayman Newton's excellent column on racial inequities in the "war on drugs," printed last week. One person claimed that the law was colorblind. Others seemed to agree, and believe that discrimination was a problem of the past.
Such naivete verges on willful and destructive self-deception -- a self-deception only conceivable by people who have never had to experience or witness racism in its many subverted and violently subtle forms. It's a self-deception couched in privilege -- privilege given to some of us through the same racist power structures that are now being denied.
The luxury of not seeing prejudice -- of believing in the blissful illusion of humanity's universal goodness -- is the luxury of childhood. If it extends beyond that, then it becomes a willful blindness on the part of the powerful, whose unspoken agenda is to preserve the status quo through their apparent ignorance of other people's plights.
There is no doubt that a great deal of progress has been made in fighting racism and other forms of discrimination -- I have no desire to diminish these wonderful achievements. Being in a better state than we were at the beginning of last century is undoubtedly grounds for celebration. It is not grounds, however, for complacency.
My column last week gently suggested that sexism wasn't just a woman's problem. Let me now say a little less gently, that no form of prejudice should be the sole problem of those disadvantaged. Accepting this is the only way we can start drawing lines between justice and injustice, while disintegrating them between black and white, gay and straight, male and female.
Sound like idealist pitter-patter -- like an idiot's pipe-dream?
That's because it can only work if people actually change, and passivity is our most addictive and most deadly narcotic. This message isn't actually idealistic at all, because I'm not saying we should all jump up and believe the world is good. I'm actually saying let's wake up and realize it's bad.
The denial of problems within our society is not harmless -- a silent majority is the essential component for the survival of prejudice, and it would be a mistake to regard such silence as anything but complicit.
The reality that many whites/ males/straights find hard to accept is that they themselves have benefited from the unfair structures within their own society -- despite never participating in active prejudice themselves.
Every time I am not searched at the airport, and I see dark- skinned people chosen without fail from those around me, I am benefiting from racism. Every time I fill out my tax return form as a married woman, I am reaping rewards that are not available to those with partners of the same sex. I am in no doubt that I have been judged more favorably, treated more respectfully, or even awarded more possibilities in life due to the fact that I am white or lead a heterosexual lifestyle. I will never be made explicitly aware of many of these instances, but that doesn't mean they're not there.
Inactivity will never buy me neutrality.
So what should we do? Kill ourselves with guilt? No. Not if our objective is to change things, rather than salve our own consciences.
What we need to do is start seeing our "business" as something more widely based than our own little worlds. We need to see that informing ourselves of other people's situations should be the very foundation of our education -- even if we find ourselves implicated in the injustices we discover. We need to be rigorous about our desire to achieve all things on our own merit. And we must constantly remind ourselves just how lucky we are.
This isn't a charitable process -- we're not standing up for the weak who can't stand up for themselves -- we're not being self-sacrificing "good" people, reaching down from our pedestals to help others "less fortunate" get a foothold. If we think that, then we haven't learned anything.
No, what we're doing is something that should be essential to our own sense of self-respect. We're getting real. How do we get real? We listen to people who've "had it real" their whole lives -- people who've struggled against racism, sexism, bigotry, who've fought through personal tragedy, mental, physical or sexual abuse, national trauma or anything else. And we get humble -- not the lyrical self-satisfied humility that makes us feel good, but the kind we get if we just sit and think for a while -- in silence.
Hilary Moore is a third-year Ethnomusicology graduate student from Perth, Scotland.
