How Can We Live in an Equal Society?

Isn’t it strange to think about the fact that we live in a world in which the majority serve the minority? A large part of the total population works for those at the top, but don’t revolt against the system that is used to oppress them. 

To illustrate this point, I’m going to use an example that I learned recently during my time in Cape Town. 

When slavery was legalized in South Africa, the slave population was actually larger than the “master” population. Their numbers were greater, and the only way to prevent an uprising was to convince the enslaved people that they were not, in fact, a part of the same group. They were different. They were divided into “black” and “colored” (I know this is not PC in American culture, but in this particular society, these are the words they continue to use to this day) people. The black people legally received the least amount of rights, the colored people received a bit more, and the white people received the most. Because of this, the majority that was enslaved was not able to form coalitions against the oppressors. They saw one another as different because they were at different points on this social hierarchy. 

During Apartheid, these social classes were enforced by law, granting different rights to different people and further drawing political distinctions between two oppressed groups of people.

To further convince these groups they were different, it was not legal for people to marry those who were outside of their social classes. Preventing people from different social classes from having connections with one another prevented very important conversations about how their race impacted their place in society. It prevented them from rising up against the minority white population who was taking everything and leaving everyone else nothing. 

This is not a reality of the past though, because if you look at our society today, you’ll see a lot of parallels to these past power structures. 

Another example I’ve noticed in this city is the fact that at restaurants, the majority of the people who are being served are white, whereas the majority (if not all) of the people serving are either black or colored. However, only 15.7% of the population is white. The majority is serving the minority class, and yet the minority class still remains at the top of society. The minority population retains the majority of the political as well as economic power. And even though Apartheid ended around 25 years ago, the black and colored population are not yet equal to the white population. They feel the impact of generations of oppression against their groups both psychologically as well as implicitly in the types of occupations they have, the education they receive, and the places they live. 

We hear all the time that the gap between the wealthiest in the world and the poorest in the world is growing wider and wider, but fail to consider what these facts implicate in our daily lives. 

The majority of the world lives with so little, but we have just come to accept as a society that this is the way that things are supposed to be. Maybe we don’t do this consciously, but if the massive inequality was an issue we were conscious of on a daily basis, why wouldn’t we rise up against those at the top?

While about 1 billion people live on a dollar a day, around half of our population lives on less than $10 a day. On the other end of the spectrum, 2,208 people are billionaires, and 46.8 million people are millionaires.

This means that for every person who owns more than a million dollars, there are 21 more people who are living on less than $10 a day. We’ve accepted this system that gives people everything they could ever dream of in life, and other people live their lives with food and water insecurity, lack of proper health care, and no possibility of moving up in life.

The reason why we’ve come to accept this system is because the people who are at the bottom do not associate with one another. We have created a hierarchical society in which there are different levels from the bottom of the bottom to the top of the top. 

As you move up the hierarchy, you are granted different privileges and these privileges have been normalized in our minds. I’ve normalized food and water security because this is what I was offered for the majority of my life. I never had to go through a few days without either of these, and so I have no concept of what it feels like to starve or be deathly dehydrated. 

However, a lot of people in the world have to experience these same things on a daily basis. They have come to accept this reality, and I have come to accept my own. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people whose parents buy them fancy cars as soon as they turn 16 years old, have a job guaranteed, and maybe a couple of houses their family owns. I cannot relate to these people because my family never had enough money to grant me such privileges. As you step up the ladder of the hierarchy, more is guaranteed in life.

We essentially use material possessions to highlight our place on this ladder. And these possessions are used to divide us. Our concept of the ladder itself draws distinctions between different social classes, and instead of us collectively questioning those at the very top, we fight each other. We fight those who are directly above and directly below us on this ladder. 

Those in blue collar jobs accuse undocumented immigrants of stealing their jobs, but fail to question why some people in very high up positions can make $1000 a day without lifting a finger. They fight people who are “lower” or maybe “equal” to them on this social hierarchy we’ve constructed in our minds, but accept the fact that other people are always guaranteed jobs, money, and security. 

Middle class and upper class people accuse people who are living in poverty and on welfare of being “lazy” and not working for their money, but fail to question why we have to exchange so much of our time for money in the first place. Why can people exchange 40 hours of their week (or more) for a paycheck, and some people make $100 while others make $1000? If we’ve decided on this system in which we exchange our time for money, then shouldn’t those who exchange such a large part of their lives for a job receive enough money to at least guarantee some basic necessities such as food, water, and shelter? 

We have infighting within the lower parts of our system and forget about the fact that there are those at the very top who are avoiding any sort of criticism for the power they yield over all of us. The people at the very top are the ones who run our societies and they are content with the inequality that exists because they benefit most from it. They have created a world in which we have accepted this inequality because those at higher parts of the hierarchy are benefiting in relation to those who are below them. 

We don’t rise up against the oppressive society we live within because we highlight our differences more than our similarities. Those of different social classes rarely interact with one another nor discuss their privileges in life because we’ve been raised to believe that these conversations are inappropriate.

The higher up one is on the hierarchy, the more uncomfortable they become discussing their privileges in life. Wealthy people, in general, have a difficult time discussing the fact that they are rich because they believe they deserve these privileges. White people have a difficult time discussing the concept of white privilege because they don’t fully understand what they’ve come to normalize in life (trust in the police, cushy suburban neighborhoods, not having to think about their race on a daily basis, etc.). Any conversations about privilege are either tuned out or justified because we’ve absorbed this idea of “working hard” so much so that we deny the fact that many of those on the bottom of the ladder are also working hard, but can’t seem to escape the system of poverty. 

Inequality exists because we’ve internalized this hierarchy and cannot empathize with people on other parts of this ladder. But it is not only hierarchy that emphasizes our differences, but also binaries. 

Men and women receive different privileges in life, and these differences are to different extents in every single culture one may exist in. In some societies, the gap is smaller, while other societies, the gap is much larger. Not only is gender a binary we’ve enforced, but also sexual orientation. Without consciously doing so, we reinforce each of these differences every single day. We have “gay” bars, but straight bars are just called bars. We have engineers, but we also have “females in stem.” We highlight the differences by saying them outright. But, many people don’t like to discuss what these differences may mean in relation to our lives because, for many, conversations about privilege seem like a personal attack. 

But, it is not a personal attack at all. It is merely an attack on the system itself. Talking about privilege is about questioning why one’s geography, race, gender, and ethnicity (all factors that we have no control over) determine our opportunities in life. They are about making people aware of what they have in life that others may have little to no access to. 

So what is a solution? Many people are afraid of socialism because they can’t bear to give up on the privileges they’ve normalized in their minds. They offer examples of how socialism and communism have never been proven to work, but ignore the fact that a capitalistic system only benefits a very small minority. Many of the people who are for a capitalist system are people who are on higher parts of this hierarchy and by switching to another system, they would effectively have to give up on some of the privileges they’ve always been guaranteed. But, it is not fair for people to live their lives at such low levels, while others live at the top of society.

In order to achieve equality, we must bring people at the top down and those at the bottom up. We have to rid ourselves of these concepts of hierarchy and binaries because they are merely constructs in our own minds that have been created to divide us instead of being united against a common enemy. They have been created to limit our freedom as much as possible and give that power to the ones who control us all. 

Maybe I sound crazy, who knows? All I know is, I’ve started noticing how there are people in many parts of the world who live with significantly less than I do. They may be as intelligent, if not more, than me and receive less in life than me. They may be working harder or longer hours than I do, but can’t seem to receive the same privileges in life as I. How is this fair? Can life be more fair? And are those who exist on higher parts of this hierarchy the ones who justify this state of existence? And in doing so, are they blind to the problems that arise by living in a hierarchical and binary dominated world?