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 laughing, because I have done both.  And it's nonsense to say that you learn more from a book than you do from actually interacting with people.  They are different kinds of knowledge and understanding.[/quote]

Okay, but I learned way more about my privilege from reading How The Other Half Banks (and many other books, and many documentaries, etc.). Maybe I'm unique in that sense but understanding how financial and legal institutions in the US propped up White wealth and depressed Black wealth made me learn much more about my privilege than, say, talking to a Black friend about racism in high school. And as we all know, you can be a totally clueless casual racist even while living, working, and going to school alongside people of color, and I don't think that many clueless casual racists have read a ton of books written by diverse people. I am glad I grew up in a diverse area, but there were plenty of white kids who grew up in that same area who call the civil war "the war of Northern aggression" and think that slavery happened a long time ago so everybody should quit talking about it.

I am not saying that people should keep their kids in bubbles. OP asked what we do about our kids' privilege, and what I do is educate them. [/quote]

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