Please note: This blog post is designed to make you think, not to make you feel bad. In case you were wondering.

Equality’s a funny thing. If I ask you if you’re pro-equality, most people would answer “yes,” some people would ask for clarification, but I suspect that few people would say that any one human is worth less than another. We don’t always think about what that means, though. It probably also depends on how you ascribe value – respect, money, opportunities, human rights, constitutional rights… It starts getting more complicated.

Here in the US, it can be downright confusing, especially right now. People are throwing around new terms that most folks haven’t heard before, and those terms sometimes make people defensive. As soon as someone is in a defensive mindset, they stop listening. It makes defining those terms challenging, because that requires communication, and a strong part of communication is listening. I see a lot of people, from a lot of different backgrounds, in duck-and-cover mode. It’s really hard to have a conversation with someone when they’re in that space.

I’m just going to talk about me now, so you don’t have to think I’m talking about you. I’m a middle aged, white, Yankee CIS-female, fairly well-educated, who has both had money and not had money. I’ve worked a variety of jobs in the retail, service, entertainment, spirituality, and marketing industries. My health is worse than some people’s and better than others. I’ve been targeted by white supremacists and attacked by at least one angry young man of color for being white. I know how to shoot a variety of guns and am rather good at some of them. I vote in almost every election, yet I do not generally trust our government to act in my interests. I have been pulled over in a nice neighborhood for driving a crappy car. I am frequently treated by a subset of the population like I have no hope of every knowing what it is they’re talking about, despite the fact that my knowledge may exceed theirs on that subject. I am currently peevish because all of the various sales and marketing stuff about my new car (which I selected, test drove, negotiated, and am paying for) is coming to the house under my husband’s name.

I recently had the experience of engaging someone in an online forum who was, in my perception, angrily attacking someone I admire. The person being attacked was a Person of Color, the attacker was white (as far as I could tell from their user picture); both appeared to be male. I interjected, saying I essentially felt the same as the attackee on the topic at hand, barely changing the phrasing, and got a very different response. I pointed that out and mused why that might be, and continued to get friendly conversation. Because there were two variables in play (ie: two major differences between myself and attackee), I can’t say for sure. I do know I got different (read: nicer) treatment.

I try very hard to be aware when I am treated differently, both when it is to my advantage and when it is not, and to speak up when I see inequality. I would much rather be treated differently based on things I can control rather than things I can’t. It’s impossible for people to see all of it, though, for a number of reasons. Here are just a few:

• A lot of it is invisible to the person benefiting from the difference in treatment.
• Men are less likely to sexually harass the opposite sex in front of members of their own gender and I’m pretty sure that would apply to racism too, but I can’t find a link to a study right now. If you have one, please share.
• Bias is not always obvious to the person who has it. (That’s two links there)

I have been trying to hold myself to the idea that speaking up is good, dominating the conversation that’s not directly about me is not (again, two links). I caught myself the other day taking over a discussion that wasn’t mine to have, because I felt like I would be heard better. Yes, I might have been, but that’s still potentially disempowering to the person on whose behalf I was arguing. I want, more than anything, to empower the people around me, and to foster unity and creativity, and equality, so I have to remember to close my mouth and sit down sometimes. There’s always room for improvement.

How are you working to make the world around you better?