Blaming the victim

If I burn your house to the ground and then blame you for being homeless, is that reasonable? Is that fair? Is that sane?

And yet that's precisely what some people do to those they perceive as "others". 

From human's earliest days as social beings, the dominant group has not just subjugated their enemies, and enslaved those they conquered, but they made sure the subordinate people were denied any opportunity to achieve equality.

In the Western world, tan-skinned people dominated people with any other color skin. 

Out of fear that the tan-skinned people might one day become victims, treated like they treated others, they removed every method that others might use to conquer them.

We've seen that same scenario play out in America. 

Native Americans were denied rights and restricted to reservations chosen by the tan-skinned people, reservations in the harshest parts of the country, without the benefits afforded their conquerors, like decent educations, adequate medical care, and proper housing. 

Dark-skinned people were enslaved, given demeaning jobs after they achieved freedom, and not allowed to become a part of the "American dream". They were denied the chance to get a good education that might enable them to get a skilled job. Then they were ridiculed for being poor and uneducated, as if was their fault. They were forced to live in neighborhoods away from the tan-skinned people, in the poorest and least maintained parts of town. Freeways were built to ensure that the non-tan people couldn't cross into the tan part of town. 

The tan-skinned people denied everything they could to people with any other color skin. Then they turned around and blamed them for their plight as if they had done this to themselves. 

While the more overt policies of segregation have been outlawed, the subtle aspects remain. Using national labels, Chinese people should own restaurants, Africans should play football, and Japanese produce electronics, while Europeans rule the world, make laws, and reap all the benefits of modern society. 

Our nation has a long way to go before all people are equal, regardless of their gender, skin color, national origin, or handicap that they were born with. Equality will depend on character, empathy, and the ability to see each other as fellow human beings, one race, one species, living on the only planet that will support us.

We have a lot of ignorance and wrong-thinking to overcome, and the sooner we start the sooner we might see true equality come to fruition.

If we continue to deny inequality exists, the longer we'll continue to have social strife. We'll never become the type of human we've always claimed we were.