With regards to priviledge and affluenza....
Last edited Thu May 8, 2014, 04:49 PM - Edit history (1)
I thought a great deal before posting this but I think perhaps as someone from a, comparatively speaking, very priviledged backround who spent most of his developmental years associating with people who came from much more deprived(When I say deprived I do mean deprived. I spent most of my childhood and adolescence in special education facilities. Many of my classmates came from very abusive homes and were dealing with substantive amounts of emotional trauma) circumstances than my own I thought perhaps this might give be able to some folks a few things to chew on that they might not have otherwise considered with regards to priviledge and affluenza.
The fact is privledge is real, but it's not necessarily white priviledge anymore that is the most insidious form. Rather instead it is, as one particular poster I believe termed it, green priviledge or priviledge derived from being born into family with a relatively high socio-economic status. This "green priviledge" can and does lead to the "condition" of Affluenza. Now for many I'm sure this not a particularly new idea. But here's what many are not always aware of. Those of us who are born into Upper-Middle Class and Upper Class families are particularly sensitive to discussions of privledge. Since from a young age we are aware that we have, for whatever reason, far more access to things that people want than the rest of our peers.
We are also particularly sensitive to it because our peers in childhood seem to almost hold it against us, at least that is how it feels. When we first become aware of this feeling that our peers seem to have at times we don't honestly know how to handle it and our parents don't always know how to hand it either. So a lot of us never really end up resolving that sense of antagonism from others born to less priviledged circumstances. We also tend form this impression in our minds that, wrongly or rightly, people hold it against us unfairly because we ourselves did not choose to be born into priviledge. Than when we attempt to vent or express our frustrations to less affluent peers growing up our feelings are often immediately invalidated as inconsequential. It does honestly feel as if they think we never have or ever will experience any real struggles in life, this can hurt. Especially since at times our less affluent peers in childhood wish to take advantage of that same priviledge. So we often become distrustful of those who grow up in middle class and working class families. This distrust can and does often stay with us well into adulthood. Another factor is that it is not uncommon to be taught from a young age that because of our families' affluence that we are somehow more capable of making intelligent decisions than others in society. Thanks to this we can form a very classicist view with regards to our peers that do not come from money.
Maybe most importantly, or not, we hear things said about us at times that really do just come from a place of ignorance. The Majority of us aren't going to inherit massive amounts of money(a number of don't really end up inheriting anything) or have trustfunds or simply have the keys to the CEO office handed over to us once our father or mother dies. Workplace Nepotism in rich families isn't anywhere near as common as people seem to think it is either. Why, because it can hurt the bottom line and I tell you now the bottom line IS sacrosanct. Now it might be true that a particular son or daughter or other young family member that shows potential and has the proper skillset for a particular position might be given a chance. But if this person can't do the job they will be fired just as quickly, if not quicker in some cases, as anyone else. Also this preconceived notion that I have observed in some people that all CEOs are at the very least millionaires who don't pay their fair share in taxes quite frankly isn't true. Most CEOs in this country make six or five figure salaries, not seven figures and actually yes a great deal of that is taxed at the federal, state and local levels before the person even has a chance to spend it. Often they only ever see half their income in their hands after taxes. Nor can they afford to hire a battalion of lawyers to keep from paying that much in taxes. So for the majority of CEOs constantly hearing how their supposed trying to evade taxes when their own taxes have ended up rising considerably in the past 6 years can be quite irksome.
Now having all that said yes I realize that a large swath of American Workers are lucky if they can even make rent right now. I'm not trying to make it seem as if a CEO being taxed to the point of watching half his income slip out of his hands is even remotely equivalent to a Single Mother working Day and Night Shifts in a warehouse or at a retail store struggling to feed, clothe, and shelter her children. Rather what I'm trying to do is give some people who might not have otherwise considered it why so many people who come from an affluent backround can be so overly defensive in general with regards to discussions of affluence, income, and poverty. Contrary to the stereotypes we're not all petty, overly materialistic, patricianesque assholes who've had everything handed to us from day one. Yet many in the media and Hollywood make it sound as it we all do is sit around eating caviar talking about what other ways can we screw over the poor. But we don't, for the most part we have the same conversations as anyone else. The Majority of the Affluent in this country don't want to cause undue suffering to complete strangers anymore than anyone else does. Than you the fact that a great many of us have actually had to struggle with things the same as anyone else. I don't deny that many us do have oppurtunities and advantages that most people don't get but that doesn't mean we can always take advantage of them anytime we like. In fact a lot of them are one time deals and even than it's not like there isn't risk for us if we fail to meet the expectations that often come with these oppurtunities.
At this point I also feel I should point out that even if you are born into an affluent family that doesn't always mean that your family will automatically extend the same level of help to you that they might have extended to your siblings or even cousins even if they are financially capable of doing so. I have actually meant people who come from families far more affluent than mine that because of one thing or another they were the Jon Snows of their family. These people were essentially told that they should consider themselves lucky to be even gifted some modest funding for trade school or community college. This is something else a lot of people seem to have misconceptions about. The idea that affluent families are all smiles and rainbows. Wealth doesn't stop you from having asshole parents or douchebag family members anymore than anything else does.
Now having said all this let me expand on my diatribe with these following statements. I'm not a champagne socialist or some over priviledged college student that somehow thinks he knows better than working people about the very issues that face them. So please save whatever accusations any of you might have of me living such a sheltered existence that I couldn't possibly know what the world is like for most people. Whatever my life experiences maybe I've seen and experienced my fair share of hardship, suffering, and pain. In fact this is one of the major things that causes the great divide between those who were born to affluence and those who weren't. The idea that coming from affluence somehow always saves you from all the really shitty things life can throw at you. It can act as a cushion at times. But when rich man's mother dies it hurts just as much as when a poor man's mother dies. Same thing with a whole host of issues. For instance having an abusive alcoholic parent is painful both emotionally and physically no matter what level of the socio-economic pyramid you were born on. When it comes down to it people we're just as human as you are with all that entails. A lot of us just wish you'd realize that and stop thinking that we automatically think of you as our social inferiors. Lastly, it is true though that a number of people born to affluence whether that is upper middle class or upper class don't ever really stop being defensive about being born into priviledge and because of this become resentful and immediately shut themselves off to anyone who questions that same priviledge.
Before I finish I feel I should state that I don't see the criticism of the affluent have been seeing since 2008 as not being legitimate. Far from it, I myself find the levels of priviledge present in both the upper class upper middle class to be completely unnecessary. I'm actually for things like Unions, Minimum Wage Increase, Quality publicly funded education, Pay Caps for CEOs, and I'm an outright anti-capitalist. Mostly because I know what Business Culture in this country does to a person's outlook. Because of my Autism I have never had the capacity for salesmanship or business that many in my family have and thus have been able to escape the mental trap that seems to envelope the mind of people who grew up in families like mine.
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And to be honest, there is still a very real social disparity between the "races", as it were. I don't think anyone disputes that. But too often, we seem to rather excessively downplay, even if not intentionally, the effect of class on American society in general; and that's unfortunate because I think we could really gain a rather more substantial audience if we could get our acts together in this regard. 
