DEI, Political Correctness, and Tools of White Supremacy
If I wouldn't say it to my own kid, why would I say it to a black child?
The world is a deeply unfair, unequal place.
Full stop.
There aren’t many good-faith arguments that can rebut this. The gulf between the most fortunate and the least fortunate, no matter how one chooses to define those categories, is virtually impossible to cross.
It’s just too wide of a gulf. The water is too choppy.
If a kid growing up in North St. Louis right now works harder than anybody else in the city, and he makes the very best choices at every turn, and he never makes any major mistakes, and everything goes as well as humanly possible, he will still die with less money than Bill Gates.
In fact, if every kid who graduated from Lafayette this past year makes excellent choices and enjoys solid luck, the classes’ combined net worth in 30 years will still mostly likely be less than that of Bill Gates. Chesterfield is nice, but it isn’t that nice. It takes a lot of lawyers and orthopedic surgeons to equal one Bill Gates.
Moreover, every family in Chesterfield right now has more in common with the families living in public housing than they do with Bill Gates.
It doesn’t take very many turns of bad luck at all to go through $2,000,000.
The bootstrap theory doesn’t really do much to address this. It doesn’t take into account how deep the inequalities really are.
It also doesn’t take into account how the advantages or disadvantages can compound; how difficulties tend to snowball. It doesn’t take into account the way that intersectionality is real; the way that some factors can help form a protective barrier, while others make a bad situation worse.
…
I say all of this to preface a concerning trend I’ve been seeing lately.
I’ve been noticing that a certain type of white, upper-middle class progressive has a very real disconnect between the things she tells her own kids, and the things she has to say to those who’ve benefited less from privilege.
A very real disconnect between the stories she tells herself, and the stories she tells those who have had fewer advantages.
Sometimes, this may be intentional.
Most of the time, it’s probably not.
But either way, there are two very different tales. Two very different takeaways.
The professional class is obsessed with striving; with always reaching for the next bar. There’s endless self-improvement. There are endless attempts to save the world. There are low-flow toilets and rooftop solar panels and carefully sorted recycling bins. There are lots of social media profile pictures devoted to Important Causes, be it while stylishly dressed at a march, or as a tasteful overlay to one’s usual profile picture. There’s endless discussion of how to best strategize one’s next career move. Thousands of miles are jogged, and thousands of dollars are spent on organic oranges and wheat grass and botox in effort to remain forever 30.
No matter the language used, this is a cohort who believes that their personal choices matter. For them. For their loved ones. For the world.
This is a cohort that fundamentally believes in its own power.
This belief in self-determination also seems to be limited to their own cohort.
This group mourns that with the end of affirmative action, no black person will ever succeed again. That it’s literally impossible for a hispanic kid to have as good of grades and standardized test scores as an Asian immigrant. There’s a lot of hand wringing that no black musician will ever top the charts.
On one hand, this sort of makes sense.
White privilege. Structural inequality.
Those who are upper-middle class and white are in a position that allows them to make good choices and impact the world around them; those with less privilege are entirely at the mercy of others. Or so would go the logical extreme of this thought process.
But also, structural inequality.
Economic inequality.
I’m four or five bad turns of luck away from being homeless. I’m about 1,715 turns of luck away from having as much money as Warren Buffet.
I’ve personally known zero billionaires. Two or three people worth more than $50M. And at least 30 who have been to prison.
If I really wanted to, I could figure out where to buy meth by the end of the night. Scheduling a physical is a different story. I know exactly zero C-Suite executives for publicly traded companies, zero U.S. Senators, zero Supreme Court justices, and about 70 people who have, at one point or another, been fired from Burger King for gross incompetence.
I’m “privileged”.
I live in a nice neighborhood, and I have a nice job that lets me sit at a laptop all day. We have an espresso machine in the office, and yoga time. There’s craft beer on tap. My fiance went to Yale.
As far as privilege goes, I have quite a bit of it.
But yeah, no.
In terms of ability to bend the world to my will, in terms of how insulated I am from the 9,000 things that can go wrong on any given day, I have a lot more in common with the guy shitting in the parking garage than I do with Mark Zuckerburg. Taking a dump in a concrete stairwell to get away from the rain is a “but by the grace of God go I”; running Facebook literally exists outside the realm of possibility.
This means that logically, the advice I’m giving minorities and the less privileged should look more or less like the advice I’d give to my own friends; to my own family members.
Advice might need to be tweaked from time to time—it’s not going to do much good to suggest that a paraplegic go for a jog, or that what works for my hair is going to work for my black colleague—but this tailoring of advice is just good sense.
My dad doesn’t need recommendations on the best places to buy comfortable skirts. My sister doesn’t need help preparing for the bar exam. They’re different people, with different lives and different concerns. Advice is tailored accordingly.
Beyond that, fundamentally, a gay black woman in North City has the same amount of agency as I do.
That agency may not get her into the same exact places. She might have to work harder to build less. She might get three or four fewer vacation days, and her weekly food budget might be $60 less. But in terms of her ability to improve her current station in life; in terms of the impact she can make on her community, she’s in about the same boat I am.
We both have the same amount of direct access to the president (none), we both have about the same social media reach (not much), and we both have about as much power to change things at work (also not much).
There is approximately a .001% chance that either of us will ever have our ideas published in The New Yorker.
We both have approximately the same budget for renting billboards, running TV ads, and purchasing ad space in Vogue. We have the same pull in the halls of congress. We probably have the same health insurance. After bills, we both have jack shit left in our bank accounts.
With or without affirmative action, with or without legacy admissions, we neither one got into Harvard. Regardless of whether white musicians are at an inherent advantage, Taylor Swift and Lizzo are both bringing home about 700,000x more money than either of our broke asses. Sasha Obama and Baron Trump have far more in common with one another than either has with a typical kid graduating from St. Joseph’s, much less Jennings.
Truthfully, I don’t know how much control any of us have over our lives; over our destiny.
I don’t know how much of a difference any given person can make, much less any normal person; any person with an IQ, net worth, and connections that all fall somewhere within the standard distribution. I don’t know how far hard work, carefully thought-out decisions, and average luck will ever get me. I don’t know how far those things will get any of the people I love.
I don’t really know how much of my life has been of my making, versus how much has been chance.
What I do know is which myths help me get through the day; which myths help me make the most of the things I do have control over.
I know which stories wear me down, and which stories make me feel helpless, and which help me make sense of the reality in front of me.
I know which myths I tell my family; which myths I tell my coworkers when I want them to do their best.
And I also know that ever since I was a kid, I would feel my spidey sense go off when I heard my parents or teachers tell two different stories.
I found it strange when my parents would carry on about how great it was that the neighbor’s kid was moving to Guatemala to start a pottery studio, but would then get nervous when I mentioned going downtown with a friend. I thought it was strange that career advice seemed to vary so much depending on whether the person giving advice was afraid I’d be moving back in with them if I failed. It seemed suspect that teachers were all about “leadership” when we were talking about FBLA or Fellowship of Christian Athletes, but they never wanted anybody to organize against homework, or to campaign for cigarette breaks. That they only wanted to see “leadership” when it aligned with their own agenda.
This has always suggested to me that there might be some sort of ulterior motive at work; that I should take the advice with a grain of salt.
I didn’t think that my parents or teachers were bad people, or that they didn’t more or less want the best for everybody. But it did tell me that personal motivations might be coloring their advice. That whatever they were telling me might not be the 100% objective truth.
This is why I find it concerning that the messaging is so different for two groups that, at the end of the day, are pretty similar.
This is why I find it concerning that middle class white kids with a .02% chance of getting into Princeton are being told to work hard so that they can beat the odds, while black and brown kids with a .01% chance are being told that it’s hopeless; that their sole door to success has been closed. This is why I find it concerning that mediocre white boys from Florissant are being told that all of society’s injustices are their fault, while equally unremarkable Hispanic girls in St. Anne are being told that they’re powerless victims with no capacity to fight for themselves.
I’m…not sure how accurate either of those messages are.
I’m thinking that Princeton isn’t the most likely route to success, even for half of the people attending Princeton. I’m thinking that quite a few alumns live in my neighborhood, and work next to regular people who graduated from Lindenwood or Central Missouri State.
I’m thinking that pinning all of society’s injustices on a kid who thinks Febreeze is an alternative to showering might be a little rich; that his voice is probably going to carry exactly as far his girlfriend, Maria’s. That being Hispanic is probably the least of Maria’s challenges. That the thing that’s really going to hold her back in life is her tendency to date guys who shower in Febreeze.
I’m not exactly sure what my advice to any of those people would be, aside from maybe “Work hard and remember to use a condom if you’re going to screw on the third date.”
Might throw in something about personal hygiene, and the magic of soap and water.
Beyond that, though, I do know that I’d probably give them all the same pep talks that I give myself; that I’d cut them all the same breaks that I cut for myself. Because at the end of the day, one of us out of that bunch might have things 40% easier than the other, but like, we’re all 1,000% poorer than Trudy Busch, and 9,000,000% poorer than Jeff Bezos. We all have between 200 and 2,000 social media followers. Mark Zuckerberg has access to 2.96 billion, along with the ability to dictate what is seen by each of those people.
In the grand scheme of things, every person reading this, and all but like, ten people in the entire St. Louis metro have more in common with one another than they do with anybody in the senate or on the Forbes 500.
In the grand scheme of things, any similarities to T. Swift are purely illusory, while the guy pooping in the parking garage literally lives less than 600 ft. away.
By sheer virtue of geography, he and I are technically going to be seeing the same people every day. We’re going to be dealing with the same weather, and the same incompetent local politicians, and the same crime waves.
We both wish we could afford new cars.
We both wish Schnucks would give out free beer.
We’re both brokeasses trying to figure out how to survive.
Tracy Chapman and Lizzo, on the other hand, will never again have to worry about how to afford a used Toyota.