Saturday, September 5, 2015

UNDERNEATH THE SAMENESS RHETORIC


This person who made this meme is trying to communicate things like: "I don't see color." "I am above seeing differences" "If everybody was above seeing differences, we'd all get along."
Some people will see the problem with this meme immediately and say, "They mean well." But I say the person that makes and embraces these kinds of things mean well for me-and-mine and for me-and-mine only.
Using race as an example: I keep thinking that the kind of person who makes this kind of meme tends to believe some of the same key things that the racist believes

1) difference is bad.
2) respecting differences is unnecessary.

That's why I can't trust people who love this kind of thing. I keep thinking that eventually there will be a difference seen in someone that is clearly *other* that cannot be denied, that will pierce the willful unconsciousness of the above it all person. And at that moment, Mr or Miss Above-It-All will have a 50/50 chance of moving from the noncommittal, non-racist position to rabid racist OR anti-racist.

Tim Wise might have been such a noncommittal person once. But the problem is that Dylann Roof might have been such a person once too.

Maybe I'm being pessimistic to say the chances are 50/50. But even if the chances of going from non-racist to rabid racist is 1 in 10 that's still too much for me. And staying pat where they are at non-committal non-racist? That position still enables racism.

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