Thisfunktional Magazine Issue 04 | Page 10

P AGE 09 The Illusion of Equality In order to understand the meaning of how deep and horrible racism and sexism is, we have to analyze the basis of it. The definition of racism is the belief that characteristics, abilities and, in extend, opportunities, can be given to people only through the basis of their race (or sex, as far as sexism is concerned). For the sake of the argument, I am going to call all forms of prejudice, racism. The darkest form of racism is the belief that one group, whether that is race, sex, religion or political group, is superior to all the others. It may have appeared through fear and developed as a weapon against anything that has taking us out of our comfort zone, but it has not subsided. In fact, is has increased. Women began their revolution first with acquiring the rights to vote, wear what they want and have a general sexual freedom. Homosexuals, bisexuals, transvestites and transgender have established a somewhat similar revolution with earning rights of marriage for example. But are we really living in an era of great Equality? Has equality really been achieved or is it just an illusion? What concerns me the most is that every time I ask someone a question aboutracism, I get the same “lolly pop” answers, “Of course we believe in equality,” “I am not racist, I love black people,” “I would love to have a gay friend” and so on. The new racism is not being racist and to be honest, I consider this a far worse case of discrimination than the origins of racism itself. In Europe, people believe they have progressed. Coming from a Christian background I hear about acceptance all the time. But God forbid one of MY children to be gay. Of course they won’t say it to my face. As nobody will say that I cannot chop wood or drive a lorry, because I’m a woman. Nowadays in Europe, we are all happy and accepting to everyone’s faces, we label our coffee shops Gay friendly and we hang out with people with different sexual preferences because that will make us cool. We will smile politely if one of them finds their way into our church and we will be very careful to be politically correct. But that doesn’t solve the problem. “Let them be homophobic behind closed doors,” comedian Eddie Izzard said. We are not hurting anyone as long as we are proper and nice when we are outside and happen to encounter one of them. But that doesn’t solve a problem at all. Masking the problem brings no solutions. I’m not saying that there is not a significant improvement from the people who were sentenced to life in prison or even died proclaiming their sexual preference and insisting it was a part of them, and not a demonic disfiguration like many Christians believe. But it is still far from being elimi