The other day when thinking about equality I was reminded of a few stories, movies, and TV shows.
Most importantly there was a short story I read in high school (I can't remember the name or author now) where everyone was forced to be equal. If you were naturally bigger or stronger you were forced to wear weights so that it was fair to the smaller, weaker ones. If you were "more beautiful" you were forced to wear ridiculous clothing and a mask. In the end one man with the most weights and stupid clothing of any man freed himself and his female counter part while on live TV. They were both executed immediately to preserve the equality.
Next I thought of the show Community. There's an episode where they seek to make their school mascot the "Human Beings." When they try to come up with a costume they try to rid it of any identifiers of race or gender so that it was fair to everyone. What they ended up with was a grey morph suit with a Joker-esque smile spray painted on it's face. It was rather creepy and kind of reminded me of the bad guy's minions in the first season of Power Rangers.
Obviously these are fictional examples, but I do think that they have a point. Equality should be fought for, but we also don't want to lose ourselves in it's name. As much as we want to be treated the same as everyone else, many times it's our differences that make us strong. It's the struggle between celebrating diversity and wanting to be treated the same as everyone else.
Some might say that we can't have it both ways, but we can, we'll just have to always be fighting to keep the scales balanced. It is a balancing act that we must not tip too much either way. We can be equal but individual but not without constant effort. It will always need to be worked on. Going one way or the other might be easier in the long run, but it would be wrong.
Just something to be mindful of.
