I’ve known people of privilege who grew up in upper-middle class or better homes — whose parents sent them to college, launched them into adulthood with financial support, rescued them from occasional stupidity, and gave them jobs in the family business — who then, oddly and incessantly, assert that the only difference between them and those less successful and perhaps struggling through life is their willingness to work hard and their superior intellect.
These people seem to believe that the struggles of poverty, a lack of quality education, institutional racism, childhood trauma, physical or mental disabilities, and much more are simply complaints made by people unwilling to put in the necessary effort.
These privileged monsters reject a reality like the one portrayed in the image here because it’s inconvenient, it threatens their fragile egos, and it robs them of their fictional rags-to-riches story.
They fail to see or refuse to see a basic truth:
Money makes everything easier. Institutional wealth clears the path for the next generation. Quality education — which is often predicated on housing prices and access to tutors and private schools — provides a wealth of opportunities. The lack of college debt allows for an earlier investment in one’s future. Family businesses and large bank accounts provide safety nets for wayward children.
It doesn’t mean you can’t succeed without these advantages, of course, but you’ll need to work exceedingly hard and get lucky along the way. You need to catch a break. Make a life-changing connection. Avoid making big mistakes. Dodge the effects of discrimination, an untimely illness, and trauma.
Conversely, you need to do something really stupid to fail in life with the monetary support that comes through privilege.
The world will always be unfair.
The road for some will always be easier than the road for others.
Some will have much, and others will have little.
The financial output and decision-making of previous generations will have a direct impact on the quality of your life.
But it’s the failure to acknowledge these advantages that is especially egregious.
The willingness to assume that the struggles of others are the result of their failure to work hard and smart when you have benefited enormously through no effort of your own is an insidious means of demonizing those less fortunate.
This kind of thinking leads to beliefs like school lunches should not be free for all children, public assistance is wasted on the undeserving, universal healthcare should not be made available to all Americans, and progressive taxation is inherently unfair.
People’s desperate, craving desire to believe that they have achieved a level of success solely based on who they are and what they’ve done—absent obvious, unearned privilege—hurts those less fortunate by allowing assumptions to be made about work ethic, intellect, and decision-making.
Sometimes, people fail because they do not work hard.
More often, people fail because their path to success is impossibly steep and littered with hideous obstacles that people of privilege can’t begin to imagine.
