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4 J. Hum. Just. 1 (1992-1993)

handle is hein.journals/ctlcrm4 and id is 1 raw text is: Collective Rights and Women: 'The Cold Game of Equality Staring' Sherene Razack, The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education The author argues that the daily realities of oppressed groups can only be acknowl- edged at the expense of dominant groups. Unlikely to confront their own domination, dominant groups merely deny that such realities exist. Rights rhetoric, emphasizing as it does individual freedom and autonomy, is one mechanism that helps to sustain denial and to mask the patterns and consequences of domination. In order to work fora more just world, we need to ground any discussion about rights in concrete social realities of oppressed groups and use with caution any rhetoric about justice that does not begin with them. The cold game of equality staring makes me feel like a thin sheet of glass: white people see all the worlds beyond me but not me. They come trotting at me with force and speed; they do not see me. I could force my presence, the real me contained in those eyes, upon them, but I would be smashed in the process. If I deflect, if I move out of the way, they will never know I existed. (Patricia Williams 1991: 222). For me collective rights are fundamentally about seeing and not seeing, about the cold game of equality staring. I experience talking about women's lives in the language of rights as a cold game indeed, a game played with words and philosophical concepts that bear little relationship to real life. In spite of these doubts, the game is always enticing, perhaps because it seems to hold out the promise that something about the daily realities of oppression will eventually emerge from under the ice. Equality staring, however, as Patricia Williams poetically describes, is a no-win situation. The daily realities of oppressed groups can only be acknowl- edged at the expense of dominant groups. Unlikely to confront their own domination, dominant groups merely deny that such realities exist. The idea of rights, turning as it does on notions of individual freedom and autonomy, helps to regulate what can be seen and acknowledged in women's lives. Rights rhetoric masks how highly organized and con- strained individual choices are; hence, how the information that dominant groups have about the lives of oppressed groups is restricted. In one way, this essay is yet another lament about the constricting features of rights discourse and this is where I begin. However, it is also an exploration of how we might seek more fruitful ways to acknowledge the realities of women's oppression and of the legitimacy of their group- based claims for justice, a theme I pursue in the second half of the paper. WHAT'S WRONG WITH RIGHTS? I first came to think about rights as a human rights educator. Without a theoretical background, but compelled nonetheless to talk about the problems of women and minorities within a framework of rights in law,

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