#so NO i'm not cheating the system for financial aid

[bookwyrminspiration]

fillinf out all the stupid forms and ordering a stupid transcript to explain to the stupid financial aid people that the reason I have so many stupid credits but am not in my stupid degree program yet is because they're stupid transfers from stupid OTHER college and stupid OTHER degrees and most of the stupid credits are not! actually! relevant! to my stupid CURRENT degree paths!

[realtalk-princeton]

How do you deal with everybody telling you you're so privileged? Everybody tells me how privileged I am because of my appearance and affluent background, but I was bullied in hs because I was really ugly/skinny back then, everybody in my family attacks me by mocking how dumb I am because I'm the only non-engineer major in the family, etc. I am thankful for what I have, but do I just suck it all up because I still have a lot more than others, even if I feel depressed and often have nightmares

Response from Clipper:

Oh boy. My first instinct passing over this question inbox was to leave it alone so that someone else could respond to it more kindly than I would, because my first response was “boo-fucking-hoo bitch, of course you’re complaining that people are reminding you that you had unearned leg-up(s) in life compared to others, instead of complaining about the rigged system(s) that gave you the leg-up(s).” But this has been in the inbox for a little while and I’ve paused to put myself in your shoes. I want to try to answer with only a little snark because, though others have asked this question from an adversarial position, I don’t think you’re actually coming from a bad place asking this. 

So, how do you deal with everybody telling you you’re so privileged? My short answer: shut up and accept it. Most people aren’t telling you this just to make you feel bad for being white/rich/male/cis/able/straight/whatever. I get that it can seem that way, and that people may be aggressive in making their points. At the same time, I’m 100% sure that if you were given a choice, you’d rather deal with people telling you that you’re privileged, than swap places with someone who doesn’t have those privileges. So yeah, suck it up. You’re privileged. Congrats. 

My long answer is gonna take longer to spell out. Privilege doesn’t mean you don’t struggle. It just determines what you struggle with. I like to think about it this way: Some life problems are “universal” in that everyone can and probably will go through them and suffer from them. Things like family struggles, bullying, acne, relationship issues, etc. I don’t think anybody is genuinely telling you to suck those up, because those problems can cause a fuckload of harm. Everybody knows that, everybody has friends and family who go through these universal life struggles if they haven’t themselves. 

On the other hand, some issues are systemic in that they negatively impact various groups of people based on unfair things. People born into low income families don’t have access to the same resources as the 40% of Princeton families who don’t qualify for financial aid for example. People of colour face discrimination that white people don’t face. People with disabilities go through life with additional challenges that able people don’t. And it goes on and on with other intersecting slices of privilege and disadvantage. That’s where the privilege aspect comes into the conversation. It recognises that there are different sources of human strife. In a fair world, all problems would be universal and would hit us all the same. But that’s not the world we live in, unfortunately. 

Your “privileged” background (whatever axes of privilege you’re talking about) precludes you from going through some very real struggles that severely impact others. It’s good that you are grateful for what you have and thankful that you don’t have some of these other struggles, but the fact is: you didn’t earn your privileges. Your accomplishes are your own, yes. You achieved them, and nobody can take that away from you. But if you were not privileged, it would have been harder (or maybe even impossible!) for you to have achieved what you have. There are some things you won’t struggle with because you’re privileged in whatever way, and those things create huge struggles in other peoples lives. Just like you didn’t choose to be advantaged in life, others without privilege didn’t earn the disadvantages they face and the barriers they have to overcome. It is unfair that many people don’t have the advantages you have.

When someone is saying that you’re privileged, they aren’t saying your life is perfect and that you can’t complain anymore. They are saying that you were helped along by that privilege and that you don’t have to face certain systemic struggles. Even as you encounter universal struggles —you mention depression and nightmares, which affect so many people— you are helped along by your privilege. Let me walk you through one hypothetical. Imagine a clone of you, with the same depression and nightmares, but who is also low-income. Would it be as “easy” for your clone to overcome depression if they can’t afford therapy? If they didn’t have health insurance? If they couldn’t afford depression/anti-anxiety prescriptions? If they had to work multiple jobs just to get by, and didn’t have enough time in the day to see a doctor? If they didn’t have the means to travel to see someone? If they had to choose between paying rent and seeing a doctor? Can you see how just one axis of privilege drastically amplifies even the universal struggles all people go through? Not only does privilege let you bypass systemic issues, but it also makes universal struggles easier to deal with as they arise.

(As a tangent, I think the discomfort around discussions of privilege is largely misplaced. Privileged people get upset when they first learn of the concept because they think they are individually being targeted/villainized for being privileged, when really it’s the systems’ fault that these inequalities exist. Some people react strongly to the concept of privilege because it clashes with the idea of individual meritocracy. They are proud of what they have, and don’t want it to be tainted with the thought that they didn’t earn it on a level playing-field, so they deny privilege’s existence and/or lash out at those who expose it. Then there are the people who do not have privilege(s) who justifiably feel cheated out of their potential due to systemic disadvantages that privileged people don’t face. There can be some animosity here towards people with privilege who don’t acknowledge the boosts that privilege has given them in life and people who don’t actively work to dismantle the systems that afforded them that unfair boost.)

So, again, how do you deal with everybody telling you you’re so privileged? I personally don’t think it’s something you would have to deal with any differently than if everybody was telling you that racism or sexism or any other systemic inequality exists. If your privilege is brought up in a way that make you feel uncomfortable, take a moment to figure out the source of that discomfort. If people are using your privilege to dismiss you and tell you that your problems aren’t real, then that’s obviously wrong. But if it’s being used to highlight inequalities that others face, I don’t see a problem with that, even if it makes you feel like your specific issues aren’t being centered at the time. 

Take a moment to step into the shoes of someone who has lived life without your privilege(s), and you will probably see why these issues might be so important to people bringing it up. People without privilege face the same universal issues you face (bullying, family drama, depression, nightmares and more) on top of amplifying systemic struggles that you do not face. Yes, people can be dismissive of privileged people’s struggles, and that’s not cool. But on the whole, I’d rather retain my privileges and have them called out from time to time, than face systemic disadvantages that are not being changed fast enough.