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“Staying at home during Coronavirus is a luxury”
That one cannot escape one’s privilege any more than one can escape disadvantage is uncomfortable at best, and at worst, as now, excruciating. 1/17 https://twitter.com/jenvalentino/status/1246126835164905472
That one cannot escape one’s privilege any more than one can escape disadvantage is uncomfortable at best, and at worst, as now, excruciating. 1/17 https://twitter.com/jenvalentino/status/1246126835164905472
This thread has been in my head for a long time, waiting for a suitable context. I had expected it to be some racial incident or issue, but disparity in access to the foundations of a life free of a day-to-day struggle for survival is not solely a racial issue 2/17
But growing up in one of the most racially segregated US cities in the 50’s means that I have, throughout my life, been viscerally aware of privilege and disadvantage through a racial lens. 3/17
My wife and I visited Toronto for a week on our honeymoon. While I had been there before, this was the first time I’d really just spent time wandering around the city. 4/17
While the ethnic diversity of that city was readily apparent, it took a few days to realize how comfortable it felt. It took a little longer to understand the reason. For the first time in my life, I was aware of *not* being in the majority, and it was wonderful. 5/17
For me, racially, it was an epiphany. To be freed of the unearned privilege attached to my ethnicity was an emancipating experience. I was also able to begin to appreciate how it may feel to be faced with the antithesis - having one’s ethnicity tied to *disadvantage*. 6/17
It didn’t take long to see the corollary; the injustice that accidents such as parentage, place of birth, ancestry, religious heritage, or even dumb luck should relegate people to...7/17
the end of a line for the basics of security - food, housing, child & family welfare, equal protection of the law, education, health, and medical care. 8/17
I see some hoping that this national disaster will lead to a better America. An America that recognizes that all of us within these borders have rights far beyond those enumerated in the first 10 amendments. 9/17
But it is important to remember, many with tremendous racial, gender and financial privilege are incapable of seeing things as anything other than a zero-sum game. 10/17
For these people, any guarantees of security rights to others accrue no benefits to them and may even somehow erode their privileged way of life. 11/17
Note many are already using their power and privilege to squeeze gains from the current national disaster, ensuring that whatever they may be forced to do to assist the chronically disadvantaged...12/17
is vastly overmatched by taxpayer largesse to business, and market exploitations not available to the middle class, let alone the poorest among us. 13/17
I wish I could slap these bastards into understanding that a more equitable society is a better society for all of us, that there is this phenomenon of indirect benefits. 14/17
Sadly, I’m afraid that there has been a continuous effort both politically and culturally, from Ronald Reagan and Gordon Gecko to DJT, Paula White and Kelly Loeffler...15/17
to remind the privileged that they have somehow *earned* their privilege, and that any security guarantees to anyone but those of means will somehow cheat the privileged from that to which they are entitled. 16/17
If we really want to come out of this a stronger, better nation, we had better be prepared to fight the oligarchic forces that have, directly and indirectly, brought this disaster upon us. /end
