privilege as a meme

the subtext seems like basically "gosh all this strife and *politics* are really unpleasant for me to hear about."

Needed a 'stop teaching me' tbf

more from the Letter From Birmingham Jail:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

as it ever was

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/being-privileged-is-not-a-choice-so-stop-hating-me-for-it/

;]

wtf is with people thinking they have to chime in when they DON'T have problems

polite thing is to stfu, imo

privileged people have real problems getting used to being de-centered

that is some prime guilt avoidance going on.

guilt is a useless emotion

ask any psychopath

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wflNtNou7sk

re: crüt's linked article

Kate, the author, contends that people hate her for her privilege, and goes on to explain how she lies to everyone about it, conceals it, feels paranoid about the "look" she gets from a delivery person, and so on, but never once gives us evidence that she was ever treated hatefully by anyone. No anecdotes of being spat on, no quotes of being called hateful names. Nothing.

What is it we're doing that she's pleading with us that we stop doing?

envying her

STOP JUDGING ME SILENTLY IN YOUR MIND.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz8ul-gmLyA

bwahaha

yeah, if friends are talking about their student loans I'm not going to bust out "yo, my parents and some scholarships and a few bucks I saved funded all my college years, I'm sorry you guys didn't have that" and then peace out

all the justifications about parents working hard and her working hard - well sure! as long as you realize that lots of those people who you think are jealous meanies are probably working just as hard just to get by

xp you should save that for the comments section on an article about student loan debt

Next, when a friend talks about getting hassled by the police just for being black, I'm going to say that it's so awkward that a police officer has never looked at me with suspicion, even when I was guilty

"The Tell-Tale White Heart"

Stop making me feel like I am less deserving.

Like, maybe there's no level of whether you "deserve" a high-rise apartment and a doorman and nice suits, but you have them? Maybe you're... equally deserving as everyone else?

That lady just needs to get herself one of these:

http://i01.i.aliimg.com/wsphoto/v2/570290779_1/Lot-of-10-3-Blue-Glass-Turkish-font-b-Evil-b-font-font-b-Eye-b.jpg_250x250.jpg

xp

maybe that's precisely the cause of her unease - that underlying sense that she's won the lottery of life, and that the narrative of "i deserve this" is a means of ignoring that most people don't get what they "deserve"

nobody deserves anything, it's all just a roll of the cosmic dice, baby

well, it's mainly capitalism at work but the point stands

Obviously being poor or non-white around this writer is a microaggression

I think unconsciously flouting your privilege or wealth is irritating and she probably does this in ways that are imperceptible to her but obvious to all others, and this affectation where she pretends she is wearing hand-me-downs and lies is obvious to everyone, too.

So tired of the "rich people work hard" line. You know what, most adults (and too many kids) in the world work pretty damn hard but most of them are not in professions where that translates into considerable wealth so stfu about how hard your parents worked because it implies your less wealthy friends' parents just didn't work hard enough and maybe that's one reason why people think you're a whiny privileged asshole who has the brass fucking balls to act like you're somehow a victim.

"i earned this!" is one of the more insidious slogans of capitalism because while it is manifestly untrue about people with great amounts of wealth and privilege, it's the kind of rhetoric which appeals those toiling away in lower economic strata. it's like this evil mental jujitsu which binds the unimaginably wealthy to their blue collar underlings who really do have a precarious hold on what they've "earned."

she should really consider bragging about her brass balls instead of complaining about ppl not liking her

in other words, "I earned this" is basically how each social class pisses all over the one beneath it.

while identifying with the one above it.

I like this comment: "And for fuck's sake, you live in a country that ADORES rich people. It's not like you're running from the peasants who want to burn down the manor. No one's threatening to hang you from a lamppost. There is literally no situation in the world that could be better for you than the one you're in now. Do you see why complaining is ridiculous?"

even here, on thought catalog, she can find no peace, no respite

Don't Hate Me Because I Work
• 9 minutes ago

−

I'm pretty sure you can be humble without pretending to be. I also have baby boomer parents. I also wear expensive clothes purchased with my own income. I also am debt free. So let your Gucci freak flag fly. Just remember, no matter how much pity you have for yourself and props you give to yourself for assuming that natural climb to upper-middle class, you're still a terrible human being and they are judging you as a person rather than your belongings.

I weep for those who will reflexively "like" such a thing.

Ach, the woman just sounds like an old-school preppie - and they don't spend money on anything but private tuition fees, anonymous charitable donations and real estate. The car will be an old beater of quality, a Volvo or Saab, and obviously they'll never go hungry or want for much. They're not materialistic because they don't use clothes or other portable possessions to signal status, but that in itself is a status an it's irritating to many observers.

An old college friend is from that background; her parents simply wrote a check for the entire four years' tuition in one go. At Sarah Lawrence, they offer parents the chance to pay for four years at a reduced price if you can swing the funds; the discount is arrived at by 4x the student's first-year tuition, which obviously goes up each year for the others. She claims all her college friends were financial aid recipients; hanging out with the obvious/nouveau rich kids was not her thing.

An old-school preppie such as you describe would never expose herself to such ridicule for the sake of saying what she only takes for granted.

A pro would have kicked off with a dubious anecdote about a strawman being mean to her at a party.

they don't spend money on anything but private tuition fees, anonymous charitable donations and real estate. The car will be an old beater of quality, a Volvo or Saab, and obviously they'll never go hungry or want for much

I'd never realized it, but this describes one of my childhood friends' parents to a t. Really nice architecturally interesting home in a well-regarded old neighborhood, used to have older volvos and I think in retirement actually started restoring _really_ old volvos, and generally not ostentatious.

it describes quite a few people i've known!

Then the kids move into squatter houses and start punk rock bands.

nah, the kid went to Harvard and works in business strategy for startups or something. blargh

*thinks about thirty-year-old Volvo my dad drives, is nonplussed by squatter house ventilation*

i didn't earn any of this shit that i have fwiw

hi-five, crut

also bruneau otm

I don't know any kids like that! All the ones who squatted in houses and played in punk bands either had really modest upbringings or had relatively non-ostentatious but generic suburban lives

An old-school preppie such as you describe would never expose herself to such ridicule for the sake of saying what she only takes for granted.

She's seriously breaching the code. This should merely be fuel for some self-deprecating humor over a good glass of wine, instead she's gone full-blown Millenial and bored us all publicly online. Her parents are probably rolling their eyes and chuckling.

Yeah, but the gulf between rich and poor hasn't been this wide since the Great Depression; her parents will have grown up in a more egalitarian time with less guilt and less oversharing generally. Also, if what went down in The Group is in any way accurate, back then, people who had money politely left paid employment to people who actually needed to work for a living. I wish the fuckers would do the same now - they're even richer.