My name is Reid, and I’m a white male from an upper-middle class Protestant family.
I began private piano and violin lessons at the age of four, and to enrich my musical development, I attended music festivals and competitions in six different states and even one in Europe. Starting in fifth grade, I was educated at a private college preparatory school, where I was not only encouraged but also shown exactly how to excel in the classroom and on standardized exams. Now, I’m attending a well-respected four-year university where I’m a member of the honors college and where I pay zero tuition due to the scholarships I’ve received for having been so accomplished. Essentially, I won the jackpot, and I was bound to from the day I was born.
Obviously, I’m incredibly thankful for my background. But my background hasn’t afforded me everything, and by that, I mean perspective.
I don’t know what poverty is. I don’t know what oppression is. I don’t struggle to pass any of my classes. I don’t fully understand how to interact with people from different backgrounds because for the eight years I spent at my K-12 private school, I was surrounded almost entirely by people just like me (at graduation, we made a joke of the homogeneity of our student body by taking a “minorities” picture, in which I was included on account of being gay).
When I say that I’ve learned more in my time here than I have at any other period in my life, I’m not exaggerating one bit.
But do you think that’s because I found other students with similar upbringings and clung to them for dear life so that I wouldn’t have to face the real people of the real world?
Of course not.
It boggles my mind that some people want to end these kinds of dialogues. To echo many teachers and professors, learning “by osmosis” doesn’t exist. To learn the material in a textbook, for example, you can’t put it under your pillow nor can you simply flip the pages in front of your eyes. You have to read. You have to think.
So why do some think that understanding other people and complex social issues can happen “by osmosis”?
To give a very good and very relevant example, I’ve heard it said countless times that “the way to end racism is to stop talking about it.” You might as well say “the only way to end disease is to stop talking about it,” which of course, is foolish.
What if Alexander Fleming had kept the discovery of penicillin to himself?
We are, however, still dying from racism, homophobia, sexism and classism, which is why it is so heartbreaking to me to hear people say, “We should just stop talking about it because if we let those problems alone, they should go away on their own.”I firmly believe statements like those are nothing but ignorance advocating for ignorance. All I hear is “We don’t want to have to face reality, and why should we? We’re not affected by the problems in question anyway.” And we’ve all been around people like this. Personally, I grew up with tons of them, and by some miracle, I won the jackpot again, and I was able to escape that cycle.
But many people aren’t. I know I have a lot to learn, but that’s because something I can’t name has told me to listen to the people I’ve been fortunate enough to have in my life.
Millions of people walk around daily, blind to the presence and mechanisms of oppression. Those are millions of people who, armed with the right skills and knowledge, could be actively fighting against racism, sexism, classism and the myriad of other problems plaguing our society and others’. And they may not know they have that ability, but they do. We all do.
So don’t stop talking about racism. Or homophobia. Or classism. Or anything. Start the dialogue, or if you don’t know how, listen to what’s already being said. Interact with the different people around you and learn from their unique experiences. Consider them thoroughly and find the similarities in your experience may share with your own life.
Reid is a sophomore biochemistry and philosophy major from Pascagoula.
