In school one day, my psychology teacher posed the question, “what would you do if you lived a lawless day?” My automatic reflex was to answer that I’d rob a bank and steal puppies from a pound, and without thinking I expressed my answer to the class. Similar answers echoed through the room, including steal a car, rob the mall, and cheat on a big test, because what other answers would you expect from a group of teenagers with college tuition and the impending ubiquity of real life on the line struggling to hold onto the days without consequences?
But consequences are very real these days. Every action we have has some ripple effect, miniscule or immense, that will affect our lives and the lives of others. We would never actually rob a bank or steal a car, because we’d be facing fines, jail time, and perhaps the most dreaded consequence of all: guilt. Every time you talk yourself out of making a moronic decision, you remind yourself of the horrible repercussions that will result.
Yet somehow, amidst this system of consequences, there remains those who steal, cheat and lie. Most of those people are people who refuse to believe they will ever face the aftermath, the “it will never happen to me” party; a group everyone is guilty of joining at one point or another. But the other small group of people is those who know they will never endure the repercussions of their actions. The privileged, wealthy, (previously) respected patrons of society. The actors, the athletes, the politicians have all taken an immunization, eradicating their ability to ever catch the illness that is retribution.
As another case surfaces where a white, privileged male is more or less legally exonerated after raping an unconscious female, the system of consequences is questioned. How is it that penetrating an unconscious young woman with foreign objects behind a dumpster is punishable by six months in prison, yet driving with a suspended license could incur a harsher punishment? The answer to that question is simple: white male privilege. Brock Turner, the rapist previously referred to, was a Stanford swimmer. The judge of this case, Aaron Pensky, was quoted saying “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him.” Judge Pensky implies in ten words that since Turner is white, an athlete, a scholar and apparently raised well, prison isn’t the right place for him. Because prison is for unintelligent, incompetent, ethnic persons, right? This is the societal blunder; prison is for criminals. Punishment is for criminals. So whether you steal, cheat, lie, or rape, there will always be consequences.
While Turner may have been legally pardoned, his life will never be the same. His mug shot is omnipresent on social media, his name sends people into a fit of rage. And most of all, he will live with the cumbersome guilt of what he has done. So despite his light sentence, skewed by white male privilege, Brock Turner will face consequences. Consequences are as inevitable as death, and although they may be little ripples when they should be an immense splash, they will still come.
