You see, there’s a pattern growing in the western world, and I’m still trying to decipher what it is. You see that everyone craves for equality of some sort……
I believe that mass separation is about an important issue as enforcing equality. The fact that people of different backgrounds and circumstances are uniting together to fight for their shared beliefs is always a pleasure to witness, but after the issue is resolved, some (not all) go right back to pretending the others don’t exist.
This is exactly the problem I seem to be having in my sixth form. I’m someone who isn’t really fond of cliques at school. That isn’t to say I’m unpopular. Well, maybe I am but I couldn’t care less. But I do find myself talking to everyone in my year group, and I have acquaintances from different social cliques (I wouldn’t go as far as to call some of these people ‘friends’ though). On the other hand, those who I do happen to be friends with don’t like my other friends. Eventually, they’ll go off to one side, and the others will go off to another, and soon I find myself caught in the middle, and then I end up isolated.
I’m pretty sure quite a bit of people around my age have this ‘problem’. When I partook in the NCS Challenge, sure we were split into teams, but we stuck together as a ‘wave’ (it’s a term NCS uses to describe the various teams as a whole). It was there where I made friends and became closer with the ones who partook in with me from my school. When the NCS Challenge ended, though I found myself cutting ties (unintentionally) with some of my teammates who I’d grown fond of, I’d at least kept three good friends.
Social cliques are present in every school. That’s a fact. They’re probably present in a workplace as well. Though there seems to be an underlying issue with mine especially. My sixth form has quite a bit of judgemental people. They take everything at face value (literally and figuratively) and are unwilling to get to know someone without just looking at their exterior. Isn’t that the main issue with racism? Isn’t that the issue with homophobia? If you were to see a hooded black man walking your way, your first instinct would be to think of ways to avoid him. In the same way if you discovered that there was a homosexual person in your school or workplace, and you happened to dislike homosexuals, your first instinct would be to either avoid them like the plague, or ensure that you don’t “catch their attention”. Some homophobes foolishly believe that homosexual people are prone to falling in love with them. That’s like a black person having feelings for someone who openly oppresses them. You’d be more likely to avoid these people if anything.
I’m not exactly the wisest person in the world, nor am I the type to look towards when concluding something. Like I said, I’m still only just a boy still in education. Others may find this entire piece as a load of naïve rambling. What is the moral of the story? And what have we actually learnt from this piece?
I’ll leave that up for you, whoever who reads this, to decide. Again, you may dismiss it, mock it, agree or disagree with it, or look for flaws in my arguments (there are undoubtedly some; that I can admit). I’d even appreciate a response to this.
