To start off, my name is S. I am a proud Canadian woman. I have a good life, I’ve been lucky, I come from a good family. I’ve had my share of struggles in life, but I’ve survived and I’m grateful for all that I have. That being said, I feel the need to write about the things that keep me up at night. The moral issues, and the struggles of everyday individuals, of my mother who works incredibly hard to help people and aid them in recovering from their illnesses. My mother who is a registered nurse and works as frontline staff to a failing health care system. I’m writing for the immigrant worker who comes to America to live the American dream, to provide for his family, and give his wife, his children a better life. I’m writing for the young girl whose mother was limited by the colour of her skin, whose grandparents were there that day, at the March on Washington on August 28th, 1963 when Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I have a dream…”. I’m writing for that young girl who wants to be a scientist, or a doctor, or an astronaut, and who should be able to do any of those things, who doesn’t deserve to be told she can’t, who is limited by others because she is a young girl of colour. I’m writing for the teenage boy who feels that he can’t show vulnerability, because he’s had it beaten into him that men don’t cry, to “take it like a man”. I’m writing for the young women who is made to feel like a freak because she may have been born with the anatomical parts of a man but is a woman and always has been in her heart and her mind, that’s who she is, a woman. I’m writing for the middle-aged Muslim woman who can’t get hired because she wears a hijab, who is made to feel lesser than because she’s a minority woman. A woman who represents the face of a terrorist in the minds of those who stereotype and overgeneralize for an entire ethnicity, and an entire religion, when the horrendous acts were committed by a select few individuals. I’m writing for the kid who is haunted by their own demons, who has a mental illness, but is treated like an outcast, like someone with the plague, because mental illness is like a dirty word, a dark stain on someone, that cannot be talked about. Because despite that kid being kind, or funny, or intelligent, they are defined as someone who is insane, when they are simply unwell, and they should be defined by so much more than just a mental illness. Those are the people I want to write for, and most of them are people I don’t know, people I can’t even begin to comprehend what its actually like to live their lives. And, that’s the thing, we need to be empathetic, we need to be understanding. But part of understanding is knowing that unless you have been through exactly what they have been through, you will never truly understand. So, I can’t pretend that I will ever know what its like to live life as a woman of colour, or a bullied teen, or an individual from the LGBTQ+ community, I will never know, but I can promise you that I will try my absolute hardest to understand that mindset, their lived experience. I think we need empathy in these times, we need to realize that we are not all the same, every single individual on this planet has a different experience, has their own viewpoint, their own ideas, beliefs, opinions, their own struggles, their own triumphs, and that’s okay. Because difference shouldn’t be an ugly thing, a terrifying thing. Because it’s not.
A teacher of mine told me that in Denmark, and Norway (I believe? I’m not 100% sure), individuals of colour have the highest likelihood of homelessness. He said that in the downtown centers, they kneel in front of the people that pass by, the white individuals, and they beg for money. And, that has stayed in my mind for weeks on end. And that’s what the world does, doesn’t it? There always has to be a superior and an inferior. But how could we have it so wrong? At first, I thought angrily to myself that if I saw that happening, I would shove one of those people passing by, someone acting like the beggar was inferior to them because of their socioeconomic status, because of the colour of their skin, I thought I would shove them onto their knees. Then I thought I would get on my knees, because of guilt, I guess. But, neither of those acts do any good, do they? Because it doesn’t solve anything.
This is what I want to say: No one should be made to feel inferior because of the colour of their skin. No one should be feeling superior or be made to feel inferior based on that, based on race, or ethnicity, or religion, or gender, or sexuality, or socioeconomic status, or age. Those aren’t criteria that should put anyone on a pedestal over another, just because one variant on those categories is seen as better than the other. The right thing would be to give someone kneeling your hand and pull them up to their feet, so you stand together, neither feeling superior or inferior to the other. And that being said, it doesn’t change the fact that one person is more disadvantaged than the other, not at all. Because I’m predominantly white (25% aboriginal), I have more privileges, more opportunities, more advantages than a woman of colour would. Because I’m a woman, I would be at a slight disadvantage when being compared to a white man. There is discrimination, and intolerance, and bias, and there are horrendous acts committed against individuals because of religion, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. And, I would never minimize that. But, no one should think of themselves as better because they see themselves as being part of some superior race, or religion, or culture. Because those categories I listed, those are NOT criteria that should make someone feel superior or inferior to the other. What does make someone inferior then, you may ask? In my mind, its people who lack morality, people who hurt other people, who ruin lives whether physically or emotionally, people who commit atrocities, people who go their entire lives thinking they are on some sort of pedestal, thinking they can hurt people, discriminate against people, bully people, and get away with it because they see themselves as superior or as some sort of god. Those, those are the people who are lesser than, because they are abusive, or violent, or bullies, or negligent.
What we need to do is change our way of thinking. Which is a lot harder than you might think, I mean look at the world, we’ve had racist ideologies that are deeply rooted across hundreds of years of history. Another teacher of mine made it clear that racism can’t be reduced to individual prejudices, or individual attitudes, which is completely true. We need to address the structures, the institutions in society that disadvantage and discriminate against individuals because of race, ethnicity, culture, etc. And, even I’m not exactly sure how we do that. But I think a start would be to change that ideology, change that idea in our heads that a certain skin colour, a certain nationality, a certain set of beliefs and practices, a certain gender, a certain sexual preference, a certain age, equals less value, less acceptance, equals lesser than. Because difference isn’t scary, it shouldn’t be, and it isn’t. We are all human, aren’t we? We all have thoughts, ideas, opinions, beliefs, don’t we? We all have feelings, we all feel emotions; love, jealousy, anger, sadness, joy, disappointment, hope, don’t we? We all have a body, a mind, a heart, don’t we? We are all just living our lives, trying to get by the best we can. So, why does such a small difference in appearance, or belief, or anatomy, have to become such a terribly scary thing? So, why don’t we change that? Because if we take a closer look, if we open our eyes a little more, we might just see that that idea, that opinion, that difference, that seemed completely impossibly to be reconciled in our brains, that difference that seemed like a terrifying thing… that difference really isn’t that scary. It’s really not a canyon that someone has to cross, its really just a step. That difference isn’t that scary, in fact it’s not even that big of a deal, because we’re all humans, we are all people. And most differences shouldn’t divide us, we should embrace the fact that we have minds that have different ideas, and opinions, and beliefs, and we have bodies that come in all different shapes, sizes, and colours, with beating hearts that feel a whole different range of emotions. We all live our lives, we all make mistakes, and have struggles and obstacles in our way, and have our triumphs, our own purpose, and that should unite us.
So, why don’t we change our way of thinking? Let’s start with that, and then let’s fix the systems that are failing us, lets restructure these institutions, lets innovate and create new and better systems. Let’s pass policies and bills and acts, that make our countries better to live in, more equitable, more successful, more just. Governments, healthcare systems, education systems, businesses; we can make adjustments to them all to improve the lives of those who are disadvantaged by them. We can create countries that support the American dream, the Canadian dream, really just the dream of any individual dreaming and searching for a better life. Someone who wants to be able to put food on the table for their family, who wants a good education for themselves or their children, who wants to live a healthy lifestyle and not lose their life to an illness that with the right healthcare, could have been treated, someone who wants to be accepted, be empathized with, and be welcomed into a country that treats them with kindness, compassion, respect, and simple human dignity.
We need to make changes, we need to make changes in the way we think, the way we act. We need to change the way institutions in society are run. We need to have empathy. And we need to stop looking at difference as a terrible thing. We need to stop being afraid. And we need to stop being afraid to speak up, to speak out when something isn’t right. And some of the things that are happening in the world right now, are NOT right. And we need to make changes, we need to stop seeing everyone who thinks, feels, looks, or acts differently as the enemy. Because that’s only going to divide us further. The enemy doesn’t come in a specific race, or gender, they don’t follow a specific religion, they don’t have a specific way of living their life or a specific ideology. The enemy seeps into our minds, it makes us think that the enemy is our neighbor, or a group of people, or the country next to us. It makes us question things, it makes us act irrationally, it makes us do things that we wouldn’t normally do, it makes us distrustful, it makes us angry, it makes us spiteful, it sometimes even makes us commit terrible acts. The enemy isn’t an individual, it isn’t human, but it is a human trait, a human emotion. The enemy is FEAR. And fear of difference is what breeds racism, and intolerance, and panic, and violence. Our enemy is not each other, it is our own fear, and we need to realize that. So, we need to conquer that fear because difference should not divide us, it shouldn’t make us afraid. It should be something we accept, something that pushes us to think about other points of view, other opinions, learn about other cultures and belief systems, and embrace those who live different life experiences than our own. Yes, we have these small, tiny differences, but these differences should not be battles we wage everything on, because at the end of the day we are all human beings each with a body, a mind, a beating heart, and a soul, and that is what we must remember.
Written on April 29th, 2019 By: Confessions of a Chaotic Mind
