about_inequality

Opinion essay about the article "Some Garbage I Used to Believe About Equality" by Johnathan Nightingale

I used to believe that gender inequalities wasn’t a generalized problem in the XXI century, that with globalization we all 
were mingled and cool with each other, all feeling part of the Humankind. However, a friend of mine who identifies as Latina 
was telling me recently how going to an interview for a tech position, she was stopped by the security guard of the building. 
When she asked where she was going and she told the reason why she was there, the guard start laughing at her in a grotesque 
manner. That made me realize how naive I was, I had been living in a mental utopia all this time. 

I strongly believe that inequality is a conversation where we all should participate. Often times we make it look that this 
is a situation that white men are causing with their attitude but in fact, it is a problem that we all are causing with our 
biases. For example we don’t perceive a behavior the same if the agent is a woman or a man and that’s a matter of fact that 
endless studies show. For example while a confident man who gives orders can be seen as an innate confident leader,  a woman 
that does exactly the same might be seeing as bossy and overambitious. In our brains there are preconceptions of what’s to be 
a woman (and its attributes) and what’s to be a man that have been inoculated since the moment we were born. Media plays a big 
role in it but it’s not the only to blame, all is the result of small daily actions that we unconsciously do as a society and 
individuals. 

In fact, although I consider myself a very strong liberal, reading this article I realized that I definitely made at least one 
of the mistakes that the author of the article mentions. I recall when a friend of mine told me that he was mistreated for the 
fact of being a person of color and I remember telling him that that person was probably an asshole with everybody. It’s not 
that I didn’t trust my friend but I unconsciously didn’t want to believe that it could be happening, I was in denial. However, 
years later I witness how a good friend that I was traveling with was aggressively padded down in public and abbused by the 
police at Amsterdam airport for any other reason than being a person of color. So these things happen and are not so random, 
unfortunately I was wrong in my optimistic believe.  

However, I think that everybody can make an impact in a small scale and that changes are like waves that eventually expand so 
it’s totally worth to give it a try. The first step towards solving inequality in general (gender, race, LGBTQ, immigrants, 
others) is to be aware of our prejudices. As I previously mentioned, we all have preconceptions and judgements that should be 
identified in our inner selfs and we should discuss this topic with others. I am not sure if that’s the intellectual 
conversation that the author talks about but it’s how I understand that concept. Secondly, we should be endorsing those who 
denounce an unfair situation for some type of discrimination, be on their side and trust them because for their experiences 
they can identify these situations when they happen. 

Any time is good to talk about inequality, our attention span is currently smaller than ever and topics are only remembered 
when they are constantly repeated. When a subject is a popular piece of news people think about it and share their thoughts 
but once the next latest news arrive we stop talking and thinking about the previous subject.  The result of the past election 
has made me deeply reflect about if there are more or less people that think like me about inequalities and discrimination, I 
wanna be hopeful that there are more than less though. We all should stand when we hear racist or chauvinist comments, we 
should ask the person what is his or her argument behind, we should talk more often with those who think different, We can’t 
change people’s opinion and situations by ignoring them and their comments. Let’s talk about inequality, it’s not a choice 
but a must.