Using words like “segregation”, “lynch mobs” and “medical apartheid” in the context of vaccines, regardless of intention, is not only inaccurate – because individuals have a choice – its also offensive to the suffering endured by actual victims and their descendants. People of colour do not have a choice about the colour of their skin. Similarly, people living with a disability, can’t just select a free and available remedy to make their disability disappear.
In Australia, First Nations people have faced the inhumanity of real segregation. So to have African-Americans like civil rights activist Rosa Parks, and people of colour in South Africa. Jewish people were also systematically segregated and persecuted for generations.
Disability advocacy groups are still fighting for an end to segregating the lives of Australians living with a disability. “The everyday reality for many people with disability is one of inequality and discrimination that separates us from community life by preventing us from undertaking everyday activities,” Women with Disabilities Australia recently wrote in a position paper.
Let me be clear: gainfully employed, white people without a disability living in modern Western countries (like all the examples mentioned above) have never faced segregation or apartheid. You can’t cosplay oppression when there is a choice. This isn’t oppression, it’s called consequences for actions.
I’m not a public health expert and won’t tell people what to do with their bodies. I’ll leave that to the doctors and scientists. I also don’t want to ignore the mental health struggles faced by many people, especially in the past two years. It’s been really tough for many people.
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Yet individuals and businesses, who do choose to feign oppression and ignore a free and readily available choice, shouldn’t be surprised when there isn’t an outpouring of sympathy and empathy. Especially not in a country that still grapples with the devastating and enduring impact of actual segregation.
Antoinette Lattouf is a multi-award winning Network Ten journalist, the co-founder of Media Diversity Australia and the author of How to Lose Friends and Influence White People which will be published by Penguin Random House in early 2022.
Twitter: @antoinette_news
