This is one of the strangest critiques I’ve ever received. How is my name privileged? The 18th-century English poet Thomas Chatterton was *extraordinarily poor.* His struggle to rise above his humble circumstances is what reached across color and time to so touch my own father. https://twitter.com/mklitt/status/1289350159348846593

He quite literally became the *picture* of neglected potential, dying fatherless, alone and in squalor in London at the age of 17.

This is an “ad-nominem” attack I receive with surprising frequency. You can name your child Lord Hermès if you want to, people! It doesn’t make them privileged at all. A name that would indicate privilege would be, for example, de la Rochefoucauld.

If I had the exact same arguments but published them under a byline that read less “white” would that somehow change their content, make it more persuasive?