Reply to Serious question: Why are people afraid to admit privilege?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Fck off. I worked for my "privilege". My parents were the first in my family to go to college. I resent this being counted against my kids for purely political reasons.[/quote]

You really don’t get it apparently.

I’m a lawyer in biglaw. No one in the building works harder than the janitorial staff. And many of them have second and third jobs. Lots of people work hard. But their hard work doesn’t help their kids like mine does. [/quote]

People think that "privilege" means you never faced adversity.  It doesn't.  It means that any adversity you faced was not the result of your race/gender/poverty.

It's also really hard for people to accept that their success was not purely the result of "hard work."  [/quote]

Seems even harder for people to accept that they had agency and, through bad choices or inaction, played a part in their own lack of success.[/quote]

Seems completely impossible for some people on this board to stop punching downward.[/quote]

Right?  People have so much invested in believing that people always get what they "deserve."  Yes, people have agency.  Yes, people make choices.  But people have different choices available to them based on factors that are totally beyond their control.  And the same choice can have very different consequences depending on factors beyond their control.  And sometimes bad stuff just happens--you or a family member gets sick, or laid off, or your car breaks down, and again, the consequences can be very different depending on factors beyond your control.  Instead of thinking "there but for the grace of God go I," some people just dig in with the idea that we live in a world where actions and consequences are perfectly matched.

I know some people who made plenty of poor choices in high school--drinking, crashing their car because they drove too fast, stealing street signs, slacking off in school--and they are living perfectly normal lives now as adults.  They were all white guys from well-off families, and their parents could afford to hire a lawyer or buy them a new car or pay for college without needing scholarships or taking out crushing loans.  That's privilege.  [b]They got breaks that a poor black kid wouldn't have gotten.  Or even a poor white kid, really.[/b]  [/quote]

Ok what about other disadvantages people can face like being fat or ugly?  Should we require kids provide a photo and let the College Board factor in their looks as part of their adversity score?  [/quote]

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