Getting The Dirty Laundry Clean

Hey Everyone! :-)

I've got a little more from Alyce's adventures to share with you, today. Enjoy! :-)

Excerpt from sci-fi satire novel:
I walked to the exhibit Squid-boy had indicated and, when I saw what it depicted, an involuntary laugh escaped my lips. It wasn't that it was funny. There surely wasn't any humor in it at all. It's just that, once again, it was so true…and yet completely inaccurate.

The scene depicted in the exhibit showed a crowded sidewalk and two police officers standing to the side. One of them was holding up a card with a gradient of various shades of brown and tan. The card was unlabeled, but the voiceover narration explained that the cop was using a color guide to help him determine which people to stop under suspicion of having committed crimes. The second officer was pointing at one of the darker shades on the card and to a person on the sidewalk whose skin tone was similar.

I took a deep breath to steady myself. That people from outside our society would make such an assumption…they couldn't have satirized the problem better if they tried. What made it scary was that they weren't trying to mock the problem; they were trying to describe it. And they had, sort of. Like a gory accident, the exhibit was disturbing on a visceral level, and I was having a hard time dragging my eyes away from it.

"There is something humorous about this exhibit, young human?" asked Squid-boy?

I shook my head. "No. It ain't funny. It ain't funny, at all. It's just that it's true, but it's not true, at the same time."

Squid-boy waved his tentacles around his head. "How can it be both accurate and inaccurate? It must be one or the other."

I forced myself to tear my eyes away from the scene and looked at the small alien. "It isn't true in that police don't actually have cards with colors on them that they use to choose people out of a crowd. But it's true in that people are treated differently based on their skin color."

"If there's no reference material, how are such decisions made?" asked Yax.

I rubbed the back of my neck. "Well, it isn't something that's official, or anything, it's just how things tend to work."

"I don't understand," said Yax.

Sighing, I closed my eyes to try to think of how to explain it. "It used to be more formal; there were laws that made it illegal for people with darker skin to do some things and for people with different skin colors to get married. Those laws were overturned, but the attitude that they came from still exists."

"So people with different skin colors aren't treated differently anymore? The problem is resolved?" asked Squid-boy.

I snorted and shook my head. "No, not at all. The problem is still there. In fact, it's everywhere; it's in almost all aspects of life. It's just that people like to pretend it doesn't exist because the laws have changed, so almost no one talks about it."

"That doesn't seem terribly productive," observed Squid-boy.

I sighed. "It isn't. It just makes it impossible to change."

"Our research indicates that decisions regarding what kind of crimes people will be prosecuted for, where people will be allowed to live, how much money the educational facilities in certain areas will be allotted, and even basic personal interactions are determined by the amount of melanin an individual produces. Is this true?"

I rubbed my temples. "Yes, and no." Waving my hands in the air, I tried to think of a way to explain. "It's all…so…amorphous. There are some people who believe that some races are superior to others. But more people, almost all people, have a more…subtle…bias that's ingrained in the way they view the world."

"It's subconscious?" asked Yax.

"It is and it isn't. Some people are very conscious of their prejudice. They revel in it. But they deny that it's prejudice. To them, thinking others are inferior is just the truth. Even though objectively it isn't, you'll never convince them of that. But most people just have a bunch of preconceived stereotypes that they use when they interact with the world. It's hard to nail down, because if you asked most people, they'll say that everyone should be treated equally. But their actions don't reflect that belief. And a lot of people get angry if anyone brings it up."

"Angry? Why?" asked Squid-boy.

I sighed. "Because it's…uncomfortable. Most people don't like to be forced to admit that they might be wrong sometimes."

"Is that why you seem distressed? Does the exhibit upset you?" asked Yax.

I winced. "Yeah, I guess so. I try not to get defensive, but it's hard. I know this," I waved at the exhibit, "is part of life in my country, but I don't like it. No one likes having their dirty laundry aired."

"But how else do you get it clean?" asked Squid-boy.