Rather: the system. By this I mean whatever it is that enables the privileged to live lives largely unconscious of their privilege; that allows people to “not see” race; that aids and abets overlooking, complacency, self-satisfaction. And also: you yourself, being within it. Not that everyone within the system is a terrible person for being in it. But that the system enables and allows people to do terrible things, often without their realizing it. The sleep of the just, isn’t it? What happens when that sleep is broken by the cries of those denied shelter and rest? Why are you asleep overlong to begin with?
Of course it will hurt. The breaking of intentions always does. Of course it’s unpleasant to see that what one thought was justice wasn’t justice after all; that one trod on another’s foot unthinking, unseeing, and wounded another. You can be as stomach-sick as you want over it. Cry about having taken advantage of an inequality, even, or that the inequality exists at all; your tears are yours.
But shock over injustice, the existence of feet that can be trod on — isn’t that the response of one who expects the justice of “colorblindness”, one who is unused to the realities that others too exist along the path you are going, that their skin breaks, that they too bleed, and thus it is important to look where one steps? Whatever pain it is that you’re feeling in reaction to offense being taken, isn’t it also (in whole or in part) due to the inequality’s extraction of emotional cost — the price for an act of racism, borne by those who experience its effects — when you would have preferred no extraction at all to occur, when you had not even thought of such a thing? You feel stomach-sick because of the anger and pain you caused; you cry because you’ve unintentionally hurt someone. Isn’t it (in whole or in part) a consequence of having the capacity to exert systemic power over another, as well; the ability to wield this power so lightly that certain words are chosen because they cannot wound you? (Why are you asleep to begin with?)
