A few weeks ago I was sitting reading my class notes in the Biology Lounge at my University when a few other people started to talk about their grievances on how unfairly they've been prejudged by other people based solely on how they look. I would like to point out that the all the people in the room were White (or of Anglo-Saxon/Nordic descent if you want to be political). I was the sole brown person in the room, so you can imagine my interest in the conversation. Their main grievance focused on how hard it is to dress these days without being categorized as an "emo", "goth", or "vampire", or even "gay" while at the same time not actually being part of any of those groups.
Now you see: I'm Native American and I can go on for days about unfairness and prejudice. When I heard him (fuck it, his name is Matt) talk about his feelings as he felt that first pang of "unfairness" it actually made me chuckle. What he experienced was at worst, a minor inconvenience, you may like to think of Western society as this "free" and "lawful" ecosystem, but I've walked into job interviews where the person who was offering the job looked at me with both surprise and disappointment and actually said: "I'm sorry this isn't going to work, you're not what we were expecting". I mean it must be my fault since my name is of Irish origin and that it's not "Red Eaglefeather".
So when Matt went on about how he hard it is to dress or act without being judged or catagorized. I thought to myself "finally" it happened, even on a tiny level he knows what it feels to be judged based solely on his looks, so I just sat back and basked in his misery. I want to be clear - I felt absolutely no sympathy for this man and his definition of what "unfairness" is. I actually hope it progresses and he suffers for years and decades and has to see a psychiatrist and after 50 years of suffering, and losing jobs because he looks "emo", then he can come to me and tell me his story. I might buy him a beer.
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