Overheard at Subway

I always hear interesting things while eavesdropping at sandwich shops. Hmm.

"Well, they have quotas for people of color and people of gender, don't they?"

I've always had problems with the term "person of color," because, really, do whites not have color and everyone else does? This thinking is part of the problem when white people think that they don't have race; they're just "normal." But, when you say "people of color," everyone pretty much knows what/who you mean.

But, "people of gender"? Hahaha. Because clearly only women have gender.

As funny as this is, it gets at a bigger problem in that we see sexism as only a problem for women or racism as only a problem for non-whites. If white and male are still the standard of all things, we can try to make them be nicer to women and non-whites, but no broader, systemic, institutional changes can be made and we'll continue to see inequality.