| sebastian_dangerfield |
12-19-2014 01:01 PM |
Re: Good White People
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Poor people (and most of my experience with poor people revolves around poor people of color) give shit up to other poor people all the time. The attitudes I see in poor neighborhoods do not exist in wealthy ones. Wealthy neighborhoods are designed to not only keep people out, but to isolate families with fences and huge lots and private clubs, within. I know plenty of poor people and they look out for each other. I know plenty of well-off people and sure, they give to charities, but if the family down the street is struggling it's just a shame.
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They've actually done studies on this. As people get lots of money, by whatever means, a large percentage start believing they are better than everyone else, and that's why they have the money. This breeds a survival of the fittest attitude they use as cover to assuage guilt at not helping others, or as justification for screwing others.
I know you've seen this shit in finance people a lot. Nothing pisses off rich entitled greedheads more than being told part of why they're where they are is luck. Fucks up their whole life narrative. Thankfully, this only applies to about half of rich people.
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I'm sure you've seen those videos where a guy, dressed normally, goes out and asks people if he can have some of their food because he's hungry and gets rejected by people with money again and again, but asks a homeless man if he can have some of his pizza because he is really hungry and is immediately given a share. Or the video of the homeless man who is handed a winning lottery ticket (for like a few hundred bucks) who wants to share it with the guy who set it up as an experiment. Whether it's something like that or the study that showed that it's the older, poor, black women who are x-times more likely to give up their seat to a pregnant woman on public transportation, there's just a different attitude that comes from having nothing and not believing you deserve a ton of shit.
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The poor have empathy the rich either lost or never had the need to develop. The rich are also addicted to comfort. They aren't standing for anybody unless you make them.
It's not happenstance the rich are often less religious and less community oriented. They don't need those social or spiritual currencies anymore. They can buy what they need, and if you've got money, you don't need the comfort of hoping there's a better afterlife somewhere. Shit's good now. Much as I'm an agnostic leaning atheist and largely libertarian sort, I have to admit - this creates callous people.
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I think it's easy to say that we focus on our families because it's the acceptable way of saying, I don't give a fuck about other people. But, like you said, we really should recognize that that's what we're saying. If your attitude is, "I want to give my child every advantage in life," okay. But no one should pretend that there isn't a flip side to that coin.
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I think the appropriate course is to use every means at your disposal to give your kid advantages. But draw the line at supporting policies that actively screw other kids out of them. It's okay to play a good hand for all its worth. It's not okay to actively work to rig up the game to shut out all the players with less means.
It's how to do that, and where to draw that line, where shit gets tricky. |
