The act of ignoring important issues in society is akin to the mentality of a small child who covers his eyes and expects no one to see him. Just because you refuse to see things in this world does not mean they don't affect you.
But let's back up a second. To be more exact, let's back up about eight months. I'm in a quiet lakeside restaurant in Kisumu, Kenya's third largest city. I'm sharing some fried tilapia with my fellow Ivy League volunteers and some of the community leaders of the small village in which we teach. After the usual exchange of pleasantries one of the community leaders asks us point-blank, "What are the relations like between blacks and whites in the U.S.?"
After a bit of verbal puttering on the American side we dive into the conversation. Just when we really start digging into the issue one of the volunteers nervously bleats a retreat, "See, this is why we just don't talk about these things. People get too riled up."
Since when is passionate discussion something to avoid? Since when is it bad for people to care enough about something to get "riled up?" Now I am not saying that you have to commit yourself to people's causes just because other people care about them. That would be ridiculous. But avoiding important topics does absolutely nothing but perpetuate systems of oppression. Yet, this is exactly the type of reaction I see over and over again from people who are intelligent enough to know better.
Perhaps the most frustrating mantra I hear tumbling out of the mouths of my fellow Dartmouth students and people, in general, goes something like "Don't talk about it. People are too sensitive and will get pissed at you." But if you do that, you refuse to acknowledge flaws in a system that teaches blacks and women that they are inherently less capable of holding positions of power than whites and men, a system that still denies basic civil liberties to gays and that maintains that the poor are poor because they are lazy or stupid.
If you think people are too sensitive, ask them what offends them and why. We are all intelligent people here, chances are you will get an intelligent answer. You just have to be willing to give a person the benefit of the doubt that he or she actually wants to have a productive conversation. Listen to what that person has to say. It won't always be easy. Not everything you say will come out perfectly. Still, getting defensive won't help.
If you are afraid that people will get mad at you, well, as understandable as that is, you are going to have to get over yourself and persevere. Dartmouth students are not going to be students forever. The sooner we realize that the sooner we can equip ourselves to face the world as it actually exists.
Your race, sex, class, sexual orientation doesn't really matter. What does matter is that you recognize your place on the spectrum and don't shy away from it. You cannot change the entire system single-handedly, but if you listen to disparate points of view with an open mind you take a huge step toward healing the system.
Ironically, I often find the people most likely to ignore oppression are decent human beings who do not believe their actions can make a difference. Well guess what? Ignoring the issues makes you complicit in exactly the problems in which you think you play no part.
When that volunteer avoided the conversation about race relations in the United States he denied the importance of addressing the pervasive existence of racism. That implies that nothing needs to be done about social inequality in out society. If you make it a point to care you do something about it.
The responsibility for constructive social dialogue does not rest solely in the hands of empowered groups. It is an unfortunate fact, however, that real change requires these groups' acknowledgement and support. Denying that reality won't change it, in fact, it just continues to prove it.
