More and more, I feel a pervasive shame for my class. If I made a list of things I despised, near the top would feature "entitlement" and "cruelty" and "disloyalty" and "selfishness". These are the psychologies that are symptomatic of poverty, hunger, abuse, murder, and racial injustice. If I woke up in another shade of skin, would I deserve a different lot?
It sounds silly on paper, but yet it remains ingrained into our society. If I woke up Black or Asian or female or gay, my "life chances" drop considerably. It's strange looking at our country and seeing our government deny bathroom equality for transgenders and think, not that long ago we had segregated drinking fountains and buses for differing melanin levels. It's not about the bathrooms; it's not about the buses and fountains and lines. It's about a cultural baseline that entitles a racial injustice, and rather than those people feeling shame, they feel morally superior in comfortable ignorance of the cruelty of the subjugation their are perpetuating, either actively or passively.
It sounds silly on paper, but yet it remains ingrained into our society. If I woke up Black or Asian or female or gay, my "life chances" drop considerably. It's strange looking at our country and seeing our government deny bathroom equality for transgenders and think, not that long ago we had segregated drinking fountains and buses for differing melanin levels. It's not about the bathrooms; it's not about the buses and fountains and lines. It's about a cultural baseline that entitles a racial injustice, and rather than those people feeling shame, they feel morally superior in comfortable ignorance of the cruelty of the subjugation their are perpetuating, either actively or passively.
My life is easy, lucky, free, but simply as a byproduct of my phenotype rather than my morality or generosity or graciousness.
