I’m Fed Up With False Equivalencies

[Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص]

I’m a writer and race educator. I spend a lot of time and effort breaking down racism, intersectional identities, and power

By:  Ajah Hales

dynamics. My work has taught me that a good analogy can anchor a concept within an adult learner’s mind, or, in other words, help them to ‘get it.’

In my article Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Reparations with White People, I used this analogy to highlight how ludicrous the national conversation around reparations is:

Think of it this way: imagine a bank error that caused you and millions of others to lose their life savings. Instead of giving the money back to you, the bank decides to hold a shareholder meeting, where the shareholders decide how the money will be returned.

Some shareholders suggest gift cards. Others want to put a portion of it into college funds for your descendants. Yet others suggest free financial management classes for all their customers — because after all, it would obviously benefit the people who lost their life savings the most, but it could also help other customers, and the bank just wants to be fair.

Now imagine that board meeting lasted 400 years. This is what Black America is facing today.

Even though I (and literally every other writer on the planet) frequently use analogies to elucidate concepts, there are always a few people in my comments who seem to intentionally miss the point.

I explain why I respond to these folx in Responding to White Nonsense: Why I Choose to Feed the Trolls, so I’m not going to get into it here. Suffice to say I’m Dikembe Mutombo when it comes to my comment section. Charge me and you will get checked.

With that being said, I try to do so with compassion, because all of us are ignorant or misguided about something, myself included. Which brings me to today’s installment of Ajah Responds to White Nonsense.

Today we’re going to learn about false equivalencies, why they are so harmful, and how to disrupt them. I’m using a comment left by Wade Murdock underneath my article for Antagonist Magazine, Why White People Can’t Cook. Wade writes:

“A wonderful example of the racist litmus test. It works like this:

Do you want to know if the title or body of an article is racist? Replace “White” with “Black”, “Asian”, or “Hispanic” Is it now offensive hate speech? If so, it was racist from the start.”

Wade, let me start by saying thank you for being willing to risk your life so that I can continue to be oblivious to the true human cost of ‘American Freedom.’ I can’t imagine your experience as a member of the military, I can only try to empathize.

With that being said, your comment is, like so many other responses to this article, an example of a false equivalency. False equivalency is a form of logical fallacy where one side uses “the real (and relevant) guilt of one side to condemn the other side, even though the other side is not in fact guilty of the same inappropriate behavior or bad reasoning — or at least not guilty to the same degree.”

I’m going to use more analogies to clarify.

If a fat person says “I can’t stand skinny people,” is that the same as a skinny person saying “I can’t stand fat people?”

If a gay person says “the straights are not okay, they must be stopped,” is it the same as a straight person saying “the gays are not okay, they must be stopped?”

If a poor person says “billionaires are garbage,” is it the same thing as a billionaire saying “poor people are garbage?”

Of course not. The difference has to do with power dynamics, message, and messenger. In all of the above examples, a critical message delivered to a privileged person by a marginalized messenger does not have the same impact as a critical message delivered to a marginalized person by a privileged messenger.

My article is not about food, it uses food as a metaphor for performative allyship. As a Black American, I get to critique white allyship, because it is me and people like me that they are (allegedly) allied with.

White Americans don’t get to critique Black allyship because Black allyship is not a thing. White people are not systemically disenfranchised, they are systemically empowered and therefore have no need for allies.

We have had forty-five and a half white presidents. Congress is so overwhelmingly and consistently white that having four womxn of the global majority in congress at the same time triggered half the country. Industries like film, television, and publishing are now finally taking steps to correct their homogeneity.

I know you were probably raised to believe that racism and prejudice are the same thing, but they are not. Racism, like all other -ism’s, is about systems.

Sexism is gender identity-based prejudice that has been codified to create disparate life outcomes and access to opportunity between men and womxn. Racism is racial identity-based prejudice that has been codified to create disparate life outcomes and access to opportunity between white people and people of the global majority. This is a real equivalency.

False equivalencies like the one used in Wade’s comment are harmful because they simplify racism down to individual prejudice, ignoring the systems and power dynamics in play that create and maintain disparate outcomes for people based on their race.

Until white Americans recognize themselves as both the progenitors and beneficiaries of these systems and begin to dismantle them, I fear conversations about racial equity will just keep going in circles.

Full article:  I’m Fed Up With False Equivalencies | by Ajah Hales | Le Fool | Medium

[Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص]

Kofi Bilal Mahmud Eid AlFitr 1443 A.H.

http://oppressedpeoplesonlineword.ning.com/profiles/blogs/6273430:B...

Kofi Bilal Mahmud

Executive Director

Oppressed Peoples Online Word 

Periodically we at OPOW have to make an evaluation on our being able to sustain this effort of bringing  you stories that many of you enjoy.  We do not take adds, nor do we charge a subscription.  Much or most of our operating expense is covered by a few individuals who have been very generous over the past 13 years.

Much of our content is supplied by volunteers and myself.   With that being said, we need your support to continue this effort.  No amount is too small or too large.  Please consider becoming a much needed supporter of OPOW today.  In advance, from all of us at OPOW,  we thank you for your continued support.  

Bilal Mahmud

Executive Director OPOW

Support OPOW:  OPOW Needs Your Support - Oppressed Peoples Online Word...The Voice...

The Voice Of The Voiceless... A People Without A Voice Can Not Be Heard...

Paypal: [e-mail]

Or Cashapp: $bilal1370

Zelle: [e-mail]

Mail: Little Deep Creek LLC
P.O. Box 1241
Conley, Ga. 30288

Support OPOW Today...An Appeal From The Executive Director Bilal Ma...

Thank you from all of us here at OPOW