Golden Oldies: Are You Privileged?
by Miki Saxon
Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
Privileged is different than entitled. Entitled mindsets believe the world owes them, whereas privileged is often unconscious — a matter of birth. Not necessarily born to great wealth, but being born with fewer challenges, such as white instead of black, brown, yellow, red, or any combination thereof; male, instead of female. Interested/knowledgeable parents. Average-to-good schools. Etc.
Most don’t see themselves as privileged, like Rick, in the story below.
Read other Golden Oldies here.
If you’re an outsider, or even an insider prone to objectivity, Silicon Valley’s culture is a mess.
When I said as much to “Rick” his response caught me off guard — although it shouldn’t have.
“I wish they would just give it a rest. I am sick and tired of all the crap about wealth inequality, lack of diversity and privacy rights. That stuff is not my responsibility. I’ve worked hard and deserve my success; nobody went out of their way to help me. I’m sure not privileged and I figure if I can do it so can they.”
I’ve heard this before, but it still leaves me speechless.
Rick is white, nice looking, middle class family, raised around Palo Alto, graduated from UC Berkeley; his dad worked for Intel.
Yet he doesn’t see himself as privileged.
Over the years I’ve known thousands of Ricks.
And therein lies the true problem.
Because it’s hard to change that which doesn’t exist.
Image credit: Dagny Mol
