Reflection #6: Status Quo

With this week's extensive discussion of margins and those people who find themselves in the margin the idea of status quo and those benefiting from the state of existing affairs should also have arisen.

All throughout history there have been those people who, as seen in the picture to the right, have lived in a world where they are the status quo. The people dancing in the picture only seem to notice the marginal people below them once they start to break through into the world above. In class discussion, the notion that only when marginal groups become disruptive to the status quo should they be paid attention to arose. This is both a sad truth and something that we should find scary. As American’s we talk a great deal about being the “melting pot” and a place where all different groups of people can come and find peace, acceptance and equality. However, often times these new groups of people are view as the “other” and pushed out to the margin, from African-Americans to the feminists, the “others” have been rejected. Rejected until they made a fuss that is. Upon the “others” standing up for themselves, different observers reacted differently, some joined the marginal people to fight and others pushed harder against them. The status quo usually occupied the position of pushing against change. And this is how change has happened, those being oppressed express their resentment and the status quo reacts in a manner that usually tries to subdue the situation, to keep things homeostatic.

One of the reasons I find this type of evolution of change sad is because it seems to promote the idea of integration versus the idea of acceptance. The status quo, and those in it, strive to preserve the current state of existence. With that idea combined with an upheaval from the “other”, the status quo attempts to keep the “others” in the place they occupied before or pushes to make the “others” like themselves. This leaves little room for acceptance of the “other” and promotes the idea of integration, ‘become like me or stay in the margin’. I want to live in a world where this type of change is no longer the norm. I think that this trend could be broken if those in the status quo, using the picture to the right as a metaphor, looked below their dancing floor to see how the ”others” live. If ignorance weren’t bliss, I think that we would live in a much more accepting world. Currently I feel it’s too easy to live in your own world if you’re in the status quo, and ignore the issues that plague those around you. Maybe if we all took a look below the dance floor, we’d be better for it.