1 / 31 - "Communicating With Everyone"

The reading from Collins’s “Toward a New Vision,” made some things click for me. In her article, she talks about intersectionality and how oppression is not a this or that issue - that it is instead a conglomeration of multiple issues involving prejudice. These prejudices affect everyone’s lives in different ways. This made me think a lot about the importance of communicating injustice in society.

Collins talked a lot about privilege and why people should examine themselves for privilege. She implied that, in order to be a true ally, someone must do something really difficult - address the parts of themselves that is causing the oppression and - even more difficult - work to change it. What she didn’t address so much, or what I didn’t understand as much, perhaps, is the how. 

Naturally, addressing your privilege involves some extent of knowledge of the world around you. You have to know about social injustice to be able to recognize it in society. But what happens when someone is so blinded by their own skewed interpretation of the world that they can’t see past their community? What can we do to get them to see the oppression in the world? If said person can’t or doesn’t, then how do we handle it?

In terms of politics, my theory is that marches and protests - which seem the primary form of addressing inequity in society - work because they call attention to a demographic that is overlooked by lawmakers. And when that demographic is angry, and they come together, lawmakers will do what they can to get the group to calm down. But does this tactic change much socially? Do everyday people look at the marches on the news* and find the empathy Collins talked about in her article? Or does it make tensions worse? I’m not trying to deny the necessity of these events, but I do pose a question: what are some ways we can attempt to change the minds of everyday people who hold racist, sexist, or otherwise oppressive beliefs, if we can at all?

*Of course, this is under the assumption the news outlets are portraying these events fairly; oftentimes, they don’t.