Band-Aids

Lately I have been thinking more deeply and reading more intensely and listening more profusely on the subject of racism and white privilege.

Racism, when used in its normal dictionary context, is the in-just treatment of one race to the next. Name calling to murder. As a future educator, I have been given many articles to read and lectures to listen to, so I can contemplate how I can make a difference in the lives of my students.

I listened to a video that talks about the genetic variation between races. You know, there's not as much difference as you'd think. There is greater genetic variation between one mosquito to the next than there is of one human being to the other. In fact, similarities in genes from one person to the next is just as likely to be as frequent, or an infrequent, as someone else across the world, no matter what colour they are.

Biologically speaking, race doesn't even exist.

It does exist though. People have died over it, gotten paid less, been forced to live in the central "sketchy" area of town. It is a social construct. Racism doesn't just exist in the minds and hearts of people, it exists as a societal norm. It exists to value and honour white people over any other colour, because those in power have made it happen through violence and through corporate businesses.

Have you ever thought about the fact that band-aids are matched (more or less) to the skin colour of white people? What "race" (I would prefer to use the word "culture") do you think owned the band-aid company? White people walk around and are handed privilege without asking for it. Their / my pockets are filled to the brim with passports and matching band-aids and the likeliness of meeting someone of the same race when asking for the manager.

You know, before this whole racial, white privilege thing came to the forefront of our cultural minds, something similar was under scrutiny. Sex. Not the act, pervert, the gender. Male over female. It's still disputed and argued today. The fact of the matter is men are given advantage over women. Yes, still, even after the feminist movement. Wage, sports, the amount they are called on in class. Men, however, have not been very quick to balance the scale. It's an equilibrium: in order for the women to rise to equality, the men have to unpack some items out of their pockets. But who wants to lose privilege? Not men. What about white people? Isn't it kind of nice being on the top? I can get a student loan, a job. The fact that I'm able-bodied and heterosexual adds to the endless opportunities. Equality sounds great, but what am I willing to give up?

Yes, it's individual, this cultural understanding. Wallow at how white people have victimized Africans for slavery and have ignored Aboriginals in our history textbooks and have abused the Chinese for labour. Get mad at society, shake your fist, furrow your brow. But don't stop at that. Look around at the huge corporations, at the governmental systems, the big guys. The big white guys with all the money, control, and power. It's these guys who have to be taken down in order to stop the white privilege, the white band-aids.

The difference between me and any other person on the Earth is something like one chromosome out of every couple thousand. So much focus has been spent on the underprivileged, but what about the overprivileged? I'm no science wiz, but I'm pretty sure for an equilibrium to exist something has to go higher, something has to go lower. . . Things can't stay the same and change.

Science points to the fact that the first human beings were on the continent of Africa. Africans hold the widest variety of genes, and are thought to be capable, even if the rest of us died off, to reproduce all the variety that we call European and Asian and East Indian.

Adam and Eve were not white, middle class Americans, believe it or not.