Privilege

One of the programs that I've applied to for PhD study has a website where they've posted pictures of their top undergraduate students. Better than ninety percent of those students are white. While I've not met any of those students personally, I have met many students from that program over the years. They drip privilege, and the thing that adds insult to injury is that all of the students and graduates that I've met from that program are not oblivious to the fact of their privilege, but there is something about them that communicates that the privilege is their due.

Yes, they have more advantages and opportunities than you do, but they're supposed to. You are inferior, not worthy of the advantages that they take for granted, so get over it.

Of course, it doesn't take a rocket scientist or even a high-school junior to ask, "Jealous much?" I admit that there is a part of me that is jealous of the advantage these people have. They are advantages that are almost always unearned, garnered because daddy knew someone and placed a call, or obtained over beers and a joint. While everything I have -- EVERYTHING -- I have because I worked for it.

Still, I recognize that in many situations I've received the benefit of the doubt, or preferential treatment because I'm white, or I've been perceived as straight. Don't get me wrong. I've worked for everything I have, but that doesn't mean that some of the things I've had didn't come more easily to me than they might have to someone else.

No one said the world was fair. But the inequities of this world are borne a little more easily if there was at least some gratitude.