Equality as an Instrument of Oppression

Dr. Tricia Rose’s work on Racism in the Era of Equality prompted me to consider how equality can be surreptitiously used to reinforce systems of oppression (and, therefore, patterns of inequality.) First of all, an ethos of color blindness that necessarily touts notions of equality can have the effect of trivializing the depth and specificity of the racial reality experienced by actual people within certain groups vulnerable to marginalization.

In addition, “equality” has the potential to lull people into believing in the existence of an egalitarian structure where there isn’t any—when what actually exists is a hierarchy that remains race-based, serving to continue its work of privileging one group of people (white people) over others. In such instances as these, “equality” keeps access to hierarchical structures hidden from people of color. As a shibboleth within environments purporting themselves as hyper-liberal and progressive, “equality” becomes a stealth means for keeping black and brown people “in their place.”

Assuming that hierarchies are necessary for order and structure, people would accept hierarchies over promises of equality so long as access to those hierarchies and the opportunity to navigate within them were deemed transparent and fair. Ideologies and sympathies that trade in the fallacy—a fallacy that peddles in the rhetoric of equality merely as a means of pandering to people of color—are the epitome of condescension and deceit.