Game Changer

by Neal Shusterman

whatever you want if it helps you sleep. That’s what we do, isn’t it? Build ourselves a comfy web of reality like busy little spiders, and cling to it so we can get through the worst of days.

“Color shouldn’t matter” I was always taught—and always believed. But there’s a big difference between “shouldn’t” and “doesn’t.” Privilege is all about not seeing that gap.

You know how some people see a stereotype, and just become it? The path is there, it’s wide, and it’s well trod. It’s easier to follow that path than to defy it. Some people follow that path all the way into the box that’s waiting for them at the end, where the sermon is rote and the flowers are plastic. And so it is and ever shall be, the quarterback and the cheerleader, in every school, in every town, now and forever, amen.

Things that change your life—things that change your world—rarely come with a warning. They broadside you like an eighteen-wheeler at an intersection. In football that’s called clipping. It’s highly illegal. A substantial penalty. But the universe plays by no rules, or at least none that make sense to those of us bound by time and physics.

We are so limited. As a species. As individuals. Not only can’t we see the future, we can’t even see the present for what it is. We’re too clouded by the things we want and the things we fear. But worse than any other blindness is that we can’t see the consequences of our actions.

suppose there were more kids who supported desegregation, but didn’t support it enough to join a club. It made me wonder how many important causes were crushed not by opposition, but by lukewarm support. And also by useless measures.

Mostly, we’re okay with the things we don’t get. We shrug our shoulders, accept the mystery, and move on. But not everyone’s like that. There are people who are so threatened by things they don’t understand that they feel a need to stomp them out. They have to crush them so that each thing killed is one less thing to tax their brain. It’s the force behind war, behind genocide, behind the worst things that human beings are capable of. It’s also the cause of the small injustices we come across every single day.

ignorance is a cockroach you can’t kill no matter how hard you try. It hides in dark, fetid places, then darts out into the open.

You might think your own personal apple has fallen far from the tree, but that tree has roots you don’t see until you trip over them.

I was angry, but not surprised. Racists like to hide in their living rooms behind quiet policy and group inertia. Armchair terrorism.

“Always the same thing. The great white hero’s gonna solve all the world’s problems. And I was stupid enough to believe it. You had me fooled, Ash. You had me fooled.” “I’m no hero,” I told him. “I’m the monster who did this to you. I stole your life and your future. You have every right to hate me.” The truth hurt, but I couldn’t hide from it. I made this world. All its flaws and injustices. All its brutal, unthinkable realities. Great white hero, my ass. This miserable world was on me.

Apathy, resistance, and self-interest hold the line, and the fumbles alone are too many to count.

Because most abusers aren’t assholes in wifebeaters who smack their bitch around because “she deserves it.” They’re guys wearing a T-shirt of your favorite band. They’re funny and charming, and genuine and respectful, right until the moment they’re not. But by the time those nastier colors bleed through, you’re already snared. Because by then, they know you. They know exactly where your buttons are—not just your buttons but your wounds, too. All those soft vulnerable places filled with self-doubt. They find those places, insert themselves deep, and have their way.

sat with a spread of Sephora cosmetics in front of the mirror. The vanity mirror, they call it. Every bit of language is layered with subtle slights. As women, we’re expected to paint ourselves to meet some social norm, and yet the very mirror that we use accuses us of being vain. I never thought about it as a guy. I would have said that was ridiculous. That it didn’t matter. But it does. And you know—it’s not just women, it’s everybody. Language secretly pushes and prods every one of us in hundreds of directions we don’t see, until the only way to be careful with your words is to never speak.

I realized that what makes sexism so infuriating isn’t just the obvious things, but the things you’re not entirely sure about. Those insidious moments that make you wonder if you’re just being paranoid, or if you’re entirely right, but being gaslit by people who want you to believe you’re crazy. How maddening to live with such uncertainty! To feel diminished by a world that keeps you on such shaky ground!

Was there ever a time in our history that we accepted each other as human beings? Was the line between “us” and “them” always a chasm we couldn’t bridge? We vilify the difference in others; we glorify the differences in ourselves. We put “them” in a box, then create our own boxes. To define ourselves so we don’t get defined. To find our tribe and defend it from the others. But that basic human need for identity is, and has always been, a double-edged sword. Because the closer to our feet we draw that line in the sand, the more we see everyone else as the enemy.