Bard College At Simon's Rock

Point 4. Ignore the fact that I say that I support communism for a second and listen to me. All I want is a world in which one doesn't need to be rich to be happy. In which one doesn't need to be a rich white male to be loved and treated like humans by the world and the status quo. In which my fellow queer people are not thrown out into the streets because their parents disown them for being queer, and even if they are, they are taken care of and treated like humans. Where they don't end up having to sell their bodies or to steal from other poor folk, or to sell drugs to survive, and end up being put in prison. In which we care more for human beings than for companies and banks and "the economy." Especially for Black people who "commit crimes" and are then treated like they are subhuman while (especially rich) white folk try to make everyone forget that they are responsible for the situations that lead to people being desperate enough to . And a world in which people don't pretend to have any sort of claim to land that is stolen in the first place, going as far as to be content with having more empty homes than homeless people, going so far as to be murderously exclusive and "nationalistic."

I want people to be able to survive even if they don't have money. I want people to acknowledge that the people they are taught to see as undeserving, as subhuman, as enemies, as "savages" as "criminals," as "resources" who are fucking human beings. I believe that most humans just want to be happy. I can see that in myself. I would rather be happy than sad. I would rather ignore all of this than have to suffer the hooorrriblee torture (I'm being sarcastic) of what it's like to be in prison, for instance. Of what it's like to be dying, shot by someone who would kill you to protect the fictional power that money holds. Of what it's like to be raped and then told that you deserved it because you were drunk. Of what it's like to watch your lover die just because they were walking in the street while black. Or what it's like to watch your lover die and then be abandoned by the movement that purports to support your people just because they weren't a perfect human being. Just because they were trying to survive or addicted to drugs. Of what it's like to know that your parents died getting you out of a mass genocide carried on by the US military, in the past or today, and people around you don't know about it and don't care. Of what it's like to be told you don't deserve to be at Simon's Rock just because you didn't get good grades, but you got bad grades because you have no money, not because your family didn't earn it but because the country has always protected white people's rights to own and grow their wealth while cutting away at the wealth of black people. Just for One example, look at what happened to Black Wall Street.

I refuse to look the other way anymore because by doing so I am profiting off of human lives. I refuse to look the other way because even if I can make a comfortable life for myself, I don't want to be comfortable while the people who are most marginalized are abandoned by movements that claim to be for social justice, but only as long as the majority approves of, feels comfortable with, or feels similar to the people they are trying to help. I refuse to look the other way as Black women have $5 median wealth, because of systemic and historical oppression, not because of their personal failure to be "good," which is what one is taught to think.

I refuse the dubious honor of succeeding in a social order that demands the life destruction of countless human beings in order to be able to sustain itself. I refuse to only care about people who are given the dubious honor of being "like me," in whatever way. I refuse to only respect and listen to people who are cis males. I refuse to only care about the lives of Black people who aren't carrying drugs, or of whites who are.

That's why, that's why I want to dedicate my life to being a fucking human being and stop the world from continuing to wantonly crush and leech the lives and passions and possibilities of countless people, and dives further and further into exploiting the planet to a point where only the descendants of rich oil barons will survive, probably in space. And I don't believe that that is at all possible in a capitalistic society where people are literally supposed to exploit other people and the planet as best they can in the current market in order to make as much money as they can.

I don't want to think you don't want to live in a world where the humans are humane to each other. I think you have been misled by the hegemonic ideals that the state, and its pet capitalists have the motive and the power to feed into each of us using media, and the educational system, and then watch us fashion each other into perfect little cogs in their ridiculous machine, while each of us tries to hold on to what privilege we have, trying to oppress those we envy and those we perceive as beneath us for daring to challenge the regime, simply by existing as they are, as middle class Black people do, and as trans and gender non-conforming folk do, among others, while ignoring the fact that the most dangerous and murderous are these systems of oppression themself. These systems work in different ways, and yet they are interconnected. The privilege of being educated about this (and then do nothing to change this, as most SRC students do, so I'm doubly impressed by your friend) because they do not have the money to come to a place like Simon's Rock, where there are at least a few professors who talk about stuff like this.

If you still think this is the "latest social justice cause" and that I am harassing you about it, then ignore me. Block me if you like. I'm not going to put more effort into you, because you are, as I said before, probably a white man, so you're less likely to get most of this because you are uniquely benefited because of your race and gender, and also maybe or maybe not have other privileges such as mental and physical health and "normality," cisgenderness, straightness, religion, nationality, among others. I'll try one more time though: even though you may be oppressed because you are poor, your oppression functions in different and similar ways than does that of someone who is a Black woman and poor, or Black, trans, in prison, family less, and poor. People have different experiences, and those experiences are connected to their histories which are erased when not in the interests of the status quo.

Okay that's all. If you receive nothing from this, I am sorry that I wasn't able to explain myself. I hope that others who may read this do at least take something from this. I also would like to point out that I am more than happy to take the time to explain myself and to answer any questions you have about anything I said.

/r/ApplyingToCollege Thread Parent