Insisting that individuals have the power to stop such treatment using sheer force of will excuses those who perpetuate oppression. Statements from alleged non-bigots that are so obsessed with the romantic idea that equality already exists that they ignore reality don't help. We are born in a world with structural and cultural inequality built into it. Those who face institutionalized, widespread forms of oppression don't get to choose for bigotry to not have power over them. The Secret is bullshit, and this kind of thinking is a version of it. The parallels to the line in Labyrinth struck me recently because someone on a friend's thread insisted, in a response to a post about racism, that "I have no power over you, unless you give it me."ĭid I "give power" to those who called 14-year-old headscarved me "fucking Arab murderer terrorist" and spat at me on the street during those terrifying weeks following 9-11? Or those drunk, armed-to-the-teeth men who followed my cousin's best friend on the freeway, and, upon arrest, claimed that they were fighting terrorism? Years later, did I "give power" to the multiple employers who denied me employment or fired me due to my "exotic" name, larger body, and textured hair?Īll along, has it been marginalized groups' fault for "giving the power" to people who didn't even need to speak to us before discriminating against us in a way that made our lives worse? I think we know the answer to that. In other words, they are the types who are capable of exercising the most agency and often seem to not understand that others do not have that freedom. I mention this not to preclude members of other ethnicities and/or genders from guilt (as they are capable of it, too), but to point out that those speaking the loudest about agency are those who face the least in the way of the more inescapable forms of structural inequality.
The sort of person to claim that power can only be given and never taken, that you only receive what you ask for, that nothing can be done to you without your consent is, all too often, white, as well as usually male.
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