Common sense is what happens when a particular point of view is regarded as the status quo because it's held by the people in power, not necessarily because it is right. These perspectives are told so often that we begin to see them as universal truths. We accept the fact that this is the way things are and have always been. For large periods of history, it was "common sense" that Black people and people of color were inferior and that this supposed inferiority justified discrimination, genocide, and slavery. Just because an opinion is widely held does not make it right.
-- Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, p. 37
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