This is a response to someone who told me I didn't have any credibility to talk critically about big-corp capitalism and supply-side economics because I went to private school and drive a car. Yes, it's a rant.
Of course I'm aware of my privilege. I'm aware that it has given me so much leverage in life that others who do not have it would otherwise have starved to death eleven years ago. I am angry. Not because I didn't suffer. Who the f* wants to suffer? I'm angry that there are countless people who work sixteen times harder than I do and yet don't even have one-sixteenth of the comforts I enjoy or were ever afforded any of the opportunities I've received and subsequently flushed down the drain.
Yes, I admit I am privileged but should I really be treated dismissively in a conversation about social justice simply because you saw me driving a car? Do I not have the right to be angry about social inequity just because I went to private school?
You may be tan but check your bum in the mirror! It's probably so white you couldn't even tell the difference if someone shone a torch on it. Your genetic lottery draw is privilege in itself. And, oh, the fact that you, a foreigner, are even here, on an Island in Southeast Asia, 6,000 nautical miles from home: Privilege. Unless you can prove you rowed yourself through the Pacific Ocean all the way from California on a dingy you built yourself using timber you felled from from a hostile jungle, you are definitely privileged. So don't be dissy telling me I can't be genuinely on-board with the green cause just because of my ride and my level of education.
And, by the way, not to denigrate him in any way, but your hero Karl Marx was born to wealthy wine producers and went to private school. Smoke on your pipe and put that in!
