Reply to Do you care if your DC has perspective about their privilege?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Books, documentaries, movies, YouTube videos, wikipedia articles, sometimes even social media posts.

You'll learn a lot more about the plight of the poor by reading a book written by a poor person than you will working alongside a poor person. [/quote]

Huh? All this ensures is that you can pat yourself on the back for knowing all about poor people without ever actually knowing any poor people. [/quote]

Also, a thing I'm seeing here is that rich people think there's them, and then poor people.  No sense that there are people who are reasonably well-off, but not rich, or working class but not poor.  It's like the world is made of people who need charity and people who can dispense it.  That's the kind of nonsense I don't want my kid thinking.  There is so much more to understand than "the plight of the poor."  How can someone do good in the world if they understand it so little?  [/quote]

PP here and you’re reading too much into my statement. I agree that rich people tend to have a poor concept of class stratification but my comment about “the plight of the poor” was just one way that you’ll gain a greater understanding of an issue by reading broadly than you will by getting a low-class job. I honestly don’t know how you can dispute this. Like, if a white kid reads How The Other Half Banks, they will have a much better understanding of their privilege than they will just from working at McDonalds. [/quote]

I’m the “Huh?…” poster and I don’t agree with you at all. I worked alongside some very down-and-out people when I was in my 20s in restaurant kitchens. People working two or three jobs, recent immigrants sending money to their families back home—there’s not a book in the world that can provide more perspective than actually working together with people, talking to them, understanding their humanity.[/quote]

I'm not saying that kids should stay in a bubble and I'm not denying your experience. But it's very possible for somebody to work alongside a less-privileged person and still feel comfortable in their own privilege. I grew up poor and worked at a fast food place with kids whose parents had much less money than I did, and nothing I could have said to them would have made them think "you know, maybe there are structural issues at play here that favor me."

And you might already know this, but it's important to underscore that underprivileged people often don't want to just be the supporting characters in the story of a privileged person's personal growth. Nobody wants to feel used. But when a person who is underprivileged writes a novel or a book or even a twitter post sharing information and a perspective they hope others will hear, they can be the main characters of their own story.

It seems bizarre that people would push back so much against reading books written by underprivileged people, by the way. They want you and their kids to read them! Get your kids educated![/quote]

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