( or : we can not be equal while we concentrate on differences)
I had a bit of time while waiting to get into the studio and I ended up going through various articles on the web, a lot of them talking about how much things have “improved” in the past decades because there are now “this many” women, black, Latino ( or any non-white male individuals) in public office, or universities, or ….
You all know how it goes….
And how all of those are excellent signs that society has become more “equal” and ore accepting of people in general- no matter their age, gender , race or nationality….
Well, I would like to say we are , in fact, a long way off from any form of equality. And that any progress that has been made ( and there has been some) is a far cry from real change- and even those who claim to be fighting some of the negative occurrences are, in fact, perpetuating them with their behavior or notions.
And , I base my opinion not on statistics, reports and analyses… but on a simple fact that we are still doing those- that we are still counting how many , of which “kind” of human, do we have present in any given scenario….
True equality… the one that we all ( well, most of us) say we strive for, would mean that someone’s color , gender or sexual orientation is absolutely irrelevant thus, there would be no need to say that there are this many women, that many “minorities” or LGBT individuals represented somewhere- because it truly would not matter.
For as long as we keep tabs on how many “others” are among a group, any kind of equality is nothing more than a word- since keeping tabs means that we still do not see everyone as equal- but instead we keep placing them into various groups which are not the same as “our” group. There are a lot of people out there who claim to be fighting negative occurrences but, some of them even believe in what they are doing, but with their insistence on numbers ( how many of which are present where) — they, in a very practical manner, also keep the divisions going — For this kind of thinking/expressing also influences the “other” groups ( for the lack of better expression) — since, by constantly being told that they “belong” to this or that group- people so start tightening up their groups and becoming more exclusive when it comes to anyone that doesn’t belong to the perceived “group” ….
It’s sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy that does more harm than good