Remember those Magic Eye pictures that were big in the 80's? There were stores in the mall devoted to them and people would stare, sometimes for hours, until they learned to see them. Once you learned the trick of relaxing your eyes just right, letting the depth of a seemingly flat image come forward, you couldn’t unsee. The first one is difficult, but after that — you’re in on the secret.
Issues of systemic cultural dominance are the same. They’re insidious because they’re invisible until you know what you’re looking for. But if you do? It’s almost too much to bear. The “normal” state of injustice is the flatness we see. And like that first time in one of those mall stores, suddenly you’re racing from image to image seeing what was hidden moments before. Only unlike those stores, institutional oppression isn’t beautiful or exciting.
It’s ugly. It’s horrifying. And it’s real.
I remember my mom nagging me to leave the store, and tuning her out so I could stare a little longer. Getting you to look away is one way the system protects itself. I also remember my brother saying I was imagining things. There was nothing there! Gaslighting the people who can see it is another. “Color blindness”, “both sidesism”, and falsely neutral centrism rely on shifting your attention or denying your experience so you won’t see it.
If anybody nags you to look away, ignore them. Seeing oppression clearly is critical to gaining credibility with voters and undermining systems of control.
