When people mention "privilege'...
For women, minorities, and liberals, it's so easy to sit back and blame your failures on the lack of "privilege." In this "article" published by Buzzfeed, one indicator of privilege is "attending an elite college," which actually happens to be a result of merit, not privilege. Yet so many people are stuck in a broken life mentality of money and success. Open up a YouTube video about some expensive penthouse or a wealthy CEO and hate speech will fill the comment sections. Every time these people see a wealthy man their attitude is like, "Look at that douchebag," instead of thinking about how they could achieve the same level of success.
What happened to working hard these days? No one wants to succeed, so they just blame their failures on others?
Just ignore the noise, these people can't take what you've worked for as they're not dedicated enough to do it.
Shouldn't have to explain why attending an elite college is not solely a result of merit. People who grow up privileged are conditioned to have better success in college admissions, because of better education and environment.
No matter how hard average people work, many will never be able to accumulate large amounts of wealth, like in these videos you reference, just because of their lack of pedigree and knowledge. That's why I feel like people who go to elite schools, and go on to work in high finance, have a moral imperative to make as much money as they can, because there are so many who work just as hard and end up with little to show for it.
This! It has nothing to do with America either or the left. You will often see that those who are wealthier have better accesses to things (Healthcare, education, opportunities, etc). Being brought into this world is itself a lottery that can heavily dictate what your future will be. It doesn't mean people do not cross the bridge to the other side, but few do and so people on both sides of the bridge create their narratives for the other side and curse each other. Many wealthy people are also born into wealth. Personally, I have no business hating the wealthy because they aren't going to live my life.
Ever wonder why elite schools care whether one is first generation to attend college? It's because they're aware that children of professionals and those in the 1% are almost guaranteed to end up at elite schools. The 2 biggest indicators of where you end up in the college race are education and income levels of your parents. That has little to do w/ merit and more to do with resources and how access to them significantly aids your development.
Children of the 1% are 77 TIMES more likely to end up in the ivy league. Now having 'privilege' doesn't mean they don't work hard or strive or put in effort, but good grief, they start off so damn far ahead to begin with!
Hating on rich people will not get you on a better path. What gets you to the top is working hard. Do rich kids have it easy? Definitely. But what are you going to do? You can't fix that. Complaining only gets you some handouts, which may feed you for one day, not lifetime.
Most of time, wealth is built over several generations. You don't need to be wealthy to live well, only rich. You can become rich whether you come from target or non-target. Regardless, you need to work hard.
Gap between rich and poor will always exist. But in my experience, U.S. has the highest probability of making from zero to hero. Go tour Asian countries. You will find many people from lesser backgrounds working their ass off to achieve better lives.
Different mindset. Do some people have it easier? No doubt. Have people risen from rags to riches? No doubt. The people with the piss poor mindset of “privilege” usually don’t go half as far as the warriors that don’t give a fuck where they came from, they keep their eye on the prize and do not get distracted by stupid shit like “privilege”.
The left is hardcore guilty of this. Obviously there’s some on the right like this, but this toxic mindset seems to be very prevalent in the left.
The only privilege is living in the United States of America. Just look at our accumulated capital stock and rules of the game in our economy. White privilege is a fallacy. Put a Haitian into the US and his income goes up by 1000%. A Mexican, 150% . A Nigerian, 1000%.
For everyone, not just the people you mentioned, it is rare for someone to blame "failures" or lack of success on themselves.
Two further points:
People have a distain for the wealthy these days. I feel this is due to income disparity but also because people there is more media about rich people. I think the stat was in the 70s or something CEOs use to make ~40x the amount of an average worker, not it's closer to 400X (not 100% sure on those numbers). It's also difficult for someone barely make ends meet to see a trust fund baby on IG with nine solid gold watches and forty sports cars. I believe Adam Carolla said it once on his podcast, it use to be if you took your kid to work and they saw the CEO, you would tell our kid that the CEO worked hard to get their and you should show him respect. Now people see CEO's as someone who almost stole something to gain their position.
Privilege is more a part of success now then it use to be; this is because people are groomed now at such early ages they need access earlier and earlier. Think about it like high school basketball. It use to be that was the only way to get exposure to a college coach was playing on the high school team; now you need to be on the super elite AAU team that travels the world at age 9 at a chance of a scholarship. Same thing when you think about being President. Initially, when the country first started, it was theoretical that anyone could potentially be President. Now I would say it's a handful of people, based on their access to funds and donators. Look at the last elections, we could have has Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton, maybe Jeb bush after that (in theory).
Where the real fallacy comes in is everyone has a different idea of working hard. But in reality, working hard doesn't get you anything, working smart does. You can go dig 100 ditches a day, that's hard work. You probably won't get rich from it. You can work 25 hours a day at IB and probably make millions over time. That's hard work to. Somewhere into between those two is where most people lie, but the ones who can work the smartest typically have better success. Just don't get the two confused.
People want to feel like everything they've achieved is their own doing and everything everyone else achieved is because of some force out of their control and those people got "lucky" or had "privilege". The reality is, BOTH those mindsets are wrong. Working hard, being intelligent enough, perseverance, etc. is necessary to achieve things in life for the vast majority of people. So the vast majority of people who are successful have worked their asses off. They should be commended for this. It's also true that most of those people have had at least SOME, if not a lot, of privilege and luck to help them get where they are. Being white and a guy gets me treated better than those from other cultures and who look different than I do, this is undoubtedly true. Being middle class gave me a leg up on people poorer than I. It also gave me a higher hill to climb than most of the people I have worked with on Wall Street and I can attribute some of my outsized success to my hard work.
The reality is, we don't have equality of opportunity. We may never have equality of opportunity. I didn't have the same amount of opportunity as most of my co-workers. I also had a lot more opportunity than many of the people I grew up with. You'll realize as you get older that luck plays a much bigger part of your life than you want to admit (you hear this pretty universally from thoughtful people over 30, which i'm approaching rapidly). That doesn't take away from your hard work, but realizing this should give you more empathy and, hopefully, the mindset to try and bring more equality to opportunity. I work extensively with low income kids, mostly minorities, in and around NYC. This is my way to try and help enact change. That doesn't mean I feel bad for where I am, for being a "1%er", working hard, being more privileged than others, etc. I also don't feel bad that I didn't have family money to get me ahead like so many others, or ivy league educated parents, access to top education as a kid, etc. I'm empathetic, I realize that we can do better and I try to help bring equal opportunity while also being proud of my accomplishments and pushing forward. That's what we should all strive to do.
tl;dr Hard work is something you should be proud of, but privilege exists and you should be aware of that too. Don't feel bad about your accomplishments, in fact, celebrate them, but look to enact change to bring more equality of opportunity., as well.
good points, I'd also mention that you yourself create a lot of your own "luck" by working hard, networking with the right people, and having the "can/will do" mentality.
Good points.
Privilege can come in many forms, but it's all how you use it. Think of the Rock, his privilege wasn't money, but it was access to the wrestling industry (his father and grandfather were wrestlers), but also the proper genetics. With those he was able to work hard and become who he is.
Kinda on the flip side, think about Kate Hudson. If her mother wasn't famous would she have been a successful actor? Probably not.
If you're genuinely interested in the topic of how successful people from both traditional and non-traditional backgrounds have been affected by their environment I highly recommend reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Growing up I tried to remain cognizant of the opportunities that I was afforded that merely positioned me to be able to partake in other endeavors. It's true that merit gets you into an elite academic or professional institution, but it wouldn't be correct in saying there are no external factors leading up to success. As my mother still tells me to this day: "No man is an island."
When people play the privilege card, its because they don't want to take responsibility for their own misfortunes. Easier for them to say- "Oh well of course he has it easier- look at his privilege." I work in finance and grew up in a nice household. Still have loans from school and paying them off. Parents were very laissez faire when it came to my career. I pushed myself to do well in school. I worked hard to get my job. I work hard to get that bonus at the end so I'm not as financially constrained.
People use Privilege as an "Out". And with that being said, I despise BuzzFeed.
I'm not sure how you or anyone can truly believe this. Whether people are using "privilege" as an excuse for someone else's success or not does not negate the systemic advantages that white, wealthy men have in society.
Yeah, when you see people doing nothing with their time and complaining it's because they aren't "privileged" and all their opportunities were taken by silver-spoon kids, that is frustrating. But there is absolutely a privileged class of people in this country. I don't have the data on hand, but one need only look at incarceration rates for like crimes to see it institutionalized. Being a white 17 year old caught carrying a bag of weed is a black mark on your college application; being a black 17 year old in that situation means a vast increase in the odds you spend time in juvenile hall/prison.
Since you've postured as though it's some sort of self-evident truth brought down from the mountainside, I'm sure you'll be able to easily provide irrefutable evidence of the "systemic advantages" that all white people have simply by virtue of their skin color. I'll wait.
Do you even know what "systemic" means?
I don't even know where to start with this nonsense. It's blatantly obvious you're entirely ignorant of introductory statistics, much less multi-variate analysis or econometrics. Stop parroting retarded shit you read on FB, lest you appear a complete imbecile to individuals who have in-depth knowledge of the topic at hand.
Let the losers worry about who has and who does not have privilege. Focus on doing what you need to do to get ahead. Don't let the mindless political situation in the US distract you.
This. People that spend their time focusing on, and complaining about, the inherent differences in human beings accomplish nothing, other than perpetuating their own misery derived from jealousy at best (hate at worst) and driven by a fundamental lack of character-building introspective thought.
It's really an American phenomenon. Immigrants and internationals don't worry about this bullshit. You don't hear Indian, Korean or Russian migrants complaining about so-called "privilege." They study their assess off, work and try to get ahead. Ironically, it's the super-privileged, zero value-add, white American, Sanders supporters that go on and on about it.
Let's try to entertain multiple viewpoints here. Echo chambers whether they are right or left don't contribute much to increase our understanding of how the world works.
Personally, I think it's beneficial to side with the viewpoint that makes you most uncomfortable, e.g. attribute your success to luck, "privilege," genetics, economics, etc. and to attribute failures to your own faults. Yeah, it's somewhat masochistic, but so far it's been fairly effective motivation to do better.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/brenda-barness-advice-to-her-children-1484…
A study came out showing the biggest indicator of success is your parents income. With $ you can go to better schools, do more extra curricular, and get an ACT tutor. Affirmative Action is a thing and sucks for Asians yea, but if daddy donates to Harvard you have a good chance of getting in, not to mention the BS that is legacy
Have you read the study? Are you familiar with its methodology? Has it been tested for significance and has its results been successfully replicated? How does that jive with the fact that the vast majority of wealth is "new money," so to speak (70% of wealthy families lose wealth by second generation: http://time.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/).
Can you answer these questions? If not, why are you presenting its conclusions as if it were gospel? Also, what do the results of that study have to do with you, individually?
I think that fact that multiple people have referenced similar findings shows that it is an accurate fact. I'm not saying privilege is bad. While my family isn't in the 1%, we still do well and it has played a part in my success. I think that we need to acknowledge our privilege and how it has helped us, but not feel bad about it. It's when people who have privilege say that they have it as hard as anyone else that I feel like something needs to be said.
There's a chapter from "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" (linked below) where the author talks about the difference between "fault" and "responsibility." The example he gives is someone leaving a baby on your doorstep. It's not your fault that the baby is there, but it is your responsibility to ensure its safety. It's similar with your life, where you started isn't your fault, but it is your responsibility to take control and make what you can of yourself.
Sure, some people start out in a better situation, but discounting their life's accomplishments to being purely the result of "privilege," which is what SJWhales often try to do, is ridiculous. Life isn't fair, get used to it. "Work hard and take all the luck you can get," as they say. This should serve as encouragement for people to better themselves and in turn give their children a better chance of success which will translate into their children's children having even greater success and so on. That reminds me of a quote from another great book called 'Once an Eagle' (also linked below).
“That's the whole challenge of life - to act with honor and hope and generosity, no matter what you've drawn. You can't help when or what you were born, you may not be able to help how you die; but you can - and you should - try to pass the days between as a good man.”
And as the great J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote...
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
The Subtle Art - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-subtle-art-of-not-giving-a-f-ck-ma…
Once an Eagle - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/once-an-eagle-anton-myrer/1102947332#/
The pats on the back here for working hard are fine and well but the reality is these people that decry privilege and wealth inequality will eventually reach a critical mass and move towards political action.
We're so afraid of whiney SJWs "moving towards political action." The SJWs should be more afraid of hardworking Americans being fed up with their bullshit.
SJWs probably don't make up a large enough voting block to singularly make a difference i.e. "bern down for what?"
There is real wealth inequality regardless of where it derives from and even hard working American experience it. While its a feel good notion to believe that red-blooded, blue-collar Americans still feel personally responsible for their own fates, I would venture to say that mentality is decreasing among current generations. At some point in the future, I think an overwhelming number of Americans will get fed up with the current system and seek to reset the rules.
Two different issues are being argued in this thread. One is white privilege and the other is rich privilege. If you think the latter doesn't exist you're utterly delusional. On the other hand, I think the way the real concept of white privilege is used by certain leftists really sours working class white peoples' views on the left. You just can't tell an unemployed white person living on $500 a month from social security that they have white privilege. They can plainly see their whiteness got them nowhere.
Going to an elite college is definitely a privilege. You’ll see a high correlation between family income and academic success. It’s one of the reasons I hear skeptics talk about AA not working since all the minorities entering top colleges act so similar to their white counterparts.
But, there’s a tradition throughout human history that people born to wealth are groomed in the ways of civilized culture, mostly because the family has loads of time of leisure to pursue education, arts, culture, philosophy, etc. Unfortunately there’s no evidence that all of that is still true. I’m sure plenty of wealthy people choose to pursue gambling and drinking more often.
But the point is, tradition is slow to change. For one, companies work at a fast pace and speak in a language that caters to their product or service vs friendly interaction. That’s something you might not learn in a blue collar household. So, while you might think that your school degree shows excellent merit, it actually more closely captures your upbringing and family background, meaning that your parents took an interest in guiding their children similar to the way that the rich do: namely, rigorous and academic discipline over emotional discipline.
There’s a divide in community because some people like Trump supporters don’t know that the world has moved towards a more sophisticated form of discipline that most on the left practices along with their even wealthier conservative counterparts on the right.
So, yes, you may have the aptitude for knowledge retention and analytical thinking to get through your rigorous discipline, but it doesn’t mean that it’s an isolated internal success. You also have a lot of thanking to do in your parents for believing in a modern and more sophisticated model in the world.
Who are you guys trying to fool? The reason why there are even opportunities at Ivys for minorities is because their scholarships are funded by rich donors donating money to the schools for their kids to get in. Of course prestige matters... just look up Jared Kushner's grades when he magically got into Harvard... disgusting. But we're lucky to live and work in the US where you can make a career by being committed and working hard, that's cold hard facts. We're lucky to have so many jobs available for teenagers and young graduates, it literally does not exist anywhere else on this planet. Truth is this world is unfair, socialism will never work because people will always exploit the system, so we might as well live in a capitalist economy where working hard actually pays off.
Second point I wanted to make reading from comments above. The US is only 250 years old... and its power was built by people that actually IMMIGRATED to the States. So the argument that foreigners are stealing americans' jobs is just ridiculous to me, most of us come from families that immigrated here anyway. Extreme socialism killed the competitivity of Europe, and it would do the same to the US.
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Obviously he’s a smart guy but it doesn’t bother you that he got in Harvard dicking around because he knew daddy would buy his way in?
High IQ is the greatest privilege someone can have. I'm a conservative and believe in hard work and people keeping as much of what they earn as possible, but there is no amount of hard work that can make up for a high IQ. We just hired a guy with an MIT civil engineering degree and a Harvard MBA. Getting into both schools would have required insane testing scores I could never achieve with the longest and hardest study methods.
Life isn't fair. But you play the hand you're dealt.
The main reason why Josh Rosen's draft stock fell is because he had a privileged upbringing. Everyone has said that he's the best football talent in the draft, with the most natural throw. However, they just cite "off the field issues" and " he rubs people the wrong way" as the reasons for why he was drafted lower. This can be translated to, "We don't like you because you are rich." I don't understand it. It's not like he hasn't had to work just as hard as his peers that were also drafted. There's nothing wrong with taking advantage of the resources your parents provide you with because of their hard work in life.
I don't think there are a lot of people who really blame all of their life failures on such factors - besides the point, that the whole "privilege" thinking system is upsides down. More correctly, there are some people who are under-privileged and those are also coming from every race, gender, etc. If one wants to change that, it should also be about helping others and never about feeling bad for your own lack of....bad luck....thinking like that seems quite, eh harmful. Ofc one should always be proud about his or her own achievements, even if other people have more or less hurdles - it's always about doing your best and not about feeling superior.
I think where the "privilege" argument gets lost is that it ignores any of the adversity the "privileged" have faced, which instantly brings out the "fuck you" response in return. Having listened to a lot of these arguments I think the key takeaways is:
They view their struggle as structurally disadvantaged vs someone who is considered "privileged."
Taking your point about attending an elite school, where I grew up, school funding was tied to property taxes...That means that wealthy communities have better schools, structurally. In cases like that there's certainly ways to balance inequality, but when it comes to racism and sexism it gets difficult.
How can I help a woman make more money if she asks for less money to begin with? How can I help her advance if her seniors are males and bond better with other males? Those are difficult questions to tackle, I think California recently made it a law to not ask about prior salary and upon request they are legally required to provide you a salary range for the position. I think there are merits to this.
Hopefully, they can coach their solutions to help bridge that communication gap. There's no question in my mind that there are structural disadvantages for women, minorities and those coming from a lower socioeconomic status. It's just difficult to communicate.
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