On Privilege
July 16, 2013 1 Comment
Frequent commenter John F. posted this on his FB status today. I love it:
If you don’t experience stress or anxiety for earning a living, it’s probably because you’ve lived a privileged life. If you think it’s easy to break out of generational poverty, it’s probably because you’ve lived a privilege life. If you relay anecdotes to describe how easy it is to overcome very limited levels of adversity it’s probably because you’ve lived a privileged life. If you think you have all the answers or that by merely saying “the system doesn’t owe you anything” you’ve somehow released yourself from years of taking, you’ve probably lived a privileged life. The worst part? You have no concept of just how privileged a life you’ve led because you’ve never had to truly live for a moment as the other half lives.
About Steve Greene
Fully Myelinated 
If you don’t experience stress or anxiety for earning a living, it’s probably because you’ve lived a privileged life.
Or you’ve worked hard.
If you think it’s easy to break out of generational poverty, it’s probably because you’ve lived a privilege life.
This is perhaps his most accurate statement, however, with the bar being low – this is no great accomplishment.
If you relay anecdotes to describe how easy it is to overcome very limited levels of adversity it’s probably because you’ve lived a privileged life.
You don’t think that it’s easy to overcome very limited levels of adversity?
If you think you have all the answers
Certainly not all. But with equal certainty, more.
You have no concept of just how privileged a life you’ve led because you’ve never had to truly live for a moment as the other half lives.
This is perhaps his least accurate statement, and with the bar being so low, this is quite an accomplishment.