The way to deal with institutionalized discrimination is to disprove it. THAT is the way to change things, too. Over time, if people of x group who are assumed to be lazy and stupid prove they are excellent and high achievers, the culture changes to [accommodate] the new fact.
Is it fair to have to work against expectation? Well, there you have me cupcake. It certainly ISN’T fair. You know what else isn’t fair? Being born mortal, in a body that starts falling apart at around 40. If you were expecting fair, you were born in the wrong world. In this world we don’t have fair or ideal. We have what works, and what doesn’t.
Working really hard to show prejudice is wrong WORKS. It takes a few generations and is unfair as hell to the people who do it, but overtime the culture changes. At least if it’s a healthy culture that doesn’t kill you just for being different.
What doesn’t work is whining about how men don’t get out of your way when you’re walking (what are you? The Roman emperor? I’m sure if you play chicken they WILL get out of the way, unless they too are in a novel-writing funk. Which is when I’ve walked into people, male and female both.)
And if you go around saying bullshit like we live in a white supremacist society, you’re just going to cause me to laugh till my head falls off. Because I’ve been in one white supremacist society and guess what they didn’t have: lawsuits for discrimination; set asides for minorities; etc. In fact their laws de facto discriminated against people based on their skin color.
Running into the occasional asshole (look, I tan, and younger son tans much more than I. If you think we don’t run into assholes on a regular basis you’re nuts) who thinks you’re inferior, or tells you to go back to Mexico/Africa/the desert, is not a supremacist society. It’s a DIVERSE society, where people are allowed to think any damn crazy thing they want to. Some people in a diverse society WILL be assholes. It’s not a crime, as such. And some assholes obsess on race, or sex, or sexual orientation. Don’t make no difference which or how. They’re just ASSHOLES.
The thing to do with assholes is not to embrace them to your chest as a precious that proves you can’t get ahead because everyone is against you. It’s to go “oh, asshole” and move on.
That is ultimately the point. Sure there are micro and macro aggressions in society. They exist for everyone, yes, including white males (because some are ugly, and some are poor, and some are overweight and none of them is perfect and someone will find a reason to pick on them too.) It’s part of living in the world and not in paradise.
The diversity you claim to love comes with the ability to be many different varieties of asshole.
Sarah Hoyt, “A Very Diverse Cake”, According to Hoyt, 2016-08-31.
June 20, 2018
QotD: Changing cultural views
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