Recently, I encountered an epistemological rupture as I started to listen to the messages I thought no longer existed in my Blue Devil community. You can call it ‘lending my ears’ to public conversations.
I was on a Duke bus and overheard a conversation between two individuals stating that this female was not “his type.” The conversation went on to describe the female—popular, intelligent and brown-skinned.
Let’s talk about how ‘she’s not your type.’
Let’s talk about how you define beauty, let’s talk about how pageants exist only for women and let’s talk about how wage inequality is still a reality for many.
Let’s talk, because though you’re saying “she’s not your type,” what I’m really hearing is a groundless dismissal of a human being, due to your bigotry, sexism and racism.
It is no secret that there is an unequal playing field for men and women. How a Miss America contestant must be a perfectly chiseled single woman without children who knows how to solve ISIS—in 20 seconds. Or how commercials and advertisements show us that only women can use Swiffers or eat yogurt. Or how women are expected to bear perfect imperfections (it should not be called natural if you still use makeup, right?). Or how education subliminally tells us that when faced with a choice, education and careers should still prioritize the man’s agenda (#bachelorette’sdegree).
A National Public Radio article, titled “Women and Wealth: Local to Global Money Lessons,” attempts to describe the wage gap between women and men. The author states that women’s earnings are “catching up,” since women now make 81 cents for every dollar a man makes. This conservative-leaning article challenges President Obama on the national pay gap—the President reports that women make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns in 2014. Critics argue that this wage gap does not capture the differences in occupations, hours or education. To that claim, I argue that women should not have different occupations, hours or education. There are inequities at the structural and societal level, and if you are still not convinced, look at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research report. IWPR reports that women have lower median earnings than men in all but one of the 20 most common occupations for women, which is bookkeeping and auditing clerks.
What the NPR article and many others fail to mention (besides failing to realize we shouldn’t be celebrating until women make 100 cents for every man’s dollar) is that it’s only white women who make 81 cents for every dollar a man makes. The U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics dig a little deeper into wage inequalities and discover that black women make 68 cents to a white man’s dollar and Hispanic or Latino women make 59 cents to a white man’s dollar. Struggling to catch up to both white women and men, in general, women of color are in a vulnerable position as the world is constantly—and simultaneously—reminding us of our gender and racial identity. There is no escaping the skin that protects us and exposes us to the world’s ills.
You may wonder how gender and racial inequality relates to the conversation I heard on the bus. The answer is simple—love. Or better yet, the lack thereof.
Sure, that emotion-inducing, stomach churning, Ryan Gosling-Rachel McAdams kind of love is important, too. In fact, according to a 2012 Duke study, 76 percent of Duke students want to be in a committed, romantic relationship, so there’s no denying the importance of that kind of sentiment. But there’s another kind of love we need, and Director of Islamic Studies Center Omid Safi perfectly describes the type of love needed to overcome these discriminations we still suffer:
“I want love. Not love as a sentiment. Not love as an emotion. I want love as God unleashed to this world. I want a love that is the very being of God in manifestations.”
Professor Safi also discusses the importance of this kind of love through our brotherly and sisterly interactions. It is this kind of unprejudiced love, difficult as it is, that allows us to step out of our comfort and learn about the struggles of our fellow brothers and sisters. It allows us to become aware of our privileges and leave the world a little better for generations that are the products of our encounters and lack of encounters.
We are vessels in which so much love has been poured into, including love from divine forces, our communities, our families, our classmates, our schools, our countries. As we journey through humanity, it’s up to us to spread those forces of love and compassion to other people—to be the torch that lights up other lives.
When I heard the "she's not his type" conversation on the bus, I was disturbed by the keen prejudices and false assumptions that grazed the surface. Still, there was more to it. By having a “type,” we are discounting entire groups of people based on what we think we know to be true. The false boundaries we have placed amongst ourselves have placed boundaries on the types of relationships, friendships, partnerships, communities and ideas that can take place.
Without any inhibition, we owe it to the advancement of humanity to adopt this type of unleashed love.
Leena El-Sadek is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Wednesday.
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