Let’s say we’re all at the same starting line, we did the same stretches, have similar good quality running shoes, practiced (some harder than others), and yet when the announcer says “Go!” I have to let others get a 30 second head start. He says go and the straight white males take off with the confidence only a straight white male could have. A couple seconds later black men get going, white women follow suit, the LGBTQ+ community, people of color, and people with disabilities are finally able to start sprinting to catch up. This is a very general list and the roadblocks people face to reaching that finish line could continue.

The fewer choices and decisions you have to make on a day to day basis, builds a level of confidence, consistency and ignorance instilled inside as one ages. A white man wakes up in the morning, puts on his suit, goes to work, decides to walk home from work, and his day is done. A woman wakes up, figures out if she wants to wear a skirt where she feels she might be harassed more by her male colleagues or a pantsuit and hear comments on her fashion choices. A black woman decides this and whether her hair will receive hateful comments or too many comments from people proving themselves that they are woke and accepting. They both walk home constantly looking over their shoulder hoping they will make it home safe.

“Visible difference is still the route to classification and therefore knowledge, and yet visible difference threatens the liberal universalistic concepts of truth and justice by invoking the spectre of relativism,” (Alcoff). Perception is how people have decided to group one another based on visible differences and this perception is instilled in the belief of ‘normality.’ Everyone needs this classification; to fit into a box, it could be a good box or a bad box but it just needs to check off boxes and dot the i’s and place you in a category. Shifting faith from a God-centered to a human-centered world placed extreme emphasis on categorization being the foundation of countries such as the U.S. What is seen on the outside makes up who you are with snap judgments being allowed and welcomed. I fear we are past the point of change or at least this change will take a long time to happen. To not look at someone and see an outside description rather than just a person. How do we deconstruct the human body to simply be just that instead of thousands of stereotypes and perceived notions? How, universally, could we ever reach that point when power and dominance is what keeps our world turning? Categories keep people in positions of power, if we start on a smaller scale eventually classism would be what is left in eradicating categories. Ready… Set… Go!