Liberal White People Who Think Their Money Insulates Them
Liberal White People Who Think Their Money Insulates Them
One of the perks of attending a college that has a large amount of affluent students and a low amount of socioeconomic activity is that you meet a lot of different types of rich people. Growing up in Chicago, I always saw the rich as a monolith. There was rich people, middle class people, and poor people. I was middle class, but I knew a lot of poor people so I thought I had a decent perspective of who we were as a nation. Boy was I wrong.
When I got to college I met so many different types of rich kids. There was the snooty old money types, the embarrassed old money types, the kid whose dad owned a factory in Indonesia, the gaudy new money kids, and then the kid who came from a long line of wealthy doctors and lawyers but who never self identify as rich because that’s far too gauche. The one common denominator in all these different types of people was that most of them identified with the politics of the left, yet most also didn’t seem to believe that the problems facing the country really affected them. It was the darndest thing!
Mike Brown was murdered during the summer before my senior year and many of these same ultra wealthy kids sprung into action, as did the rest of the city, but one thing that caught me a bit off guard was the “us vs them” mentality that many of these wealthy kids had with the issues. It was akin to them saying, “We stand with you all with your issue,” and while I can absolutely see their perspective, I questioned many as to why they didn’t think that the issues surrounding Mike Brown’s death didn’t directly apply to them as well? While yes, I understood that these kids did not want to overstep (and I really appreciate it), it seems like somehow many of them felt like they could simply go home when the protests and furor subsided. And I suppose they were right. Eventually we all graduated, most decided to spend less of their time protesting and the wealthy kids either went into their parent’s industries, to “find themselves”, or to volunteer at various left leaning charities, and us no wealthy students went on to try to do the same.
Fast forward, I’m working in a start up and there are many policy decisions to be made about permissibility of items in the name of free speech. Once again, I found myself surrounded by left leaning peers and superiors that grew up wealthy and attended left leaning wealthy institutions, but the difference here is that these older wealthy individuals would many times side against their professed ideology and anchor themselves in a perceived feeling of “openmindness” that would allow a home for bigotry. While many of these people were not simply cisgendered, heterosexual, white males, but you’d have religious minorities, women and/or LGBT individuals also siding with allowing hateful items on the platform, even when those hateful items stemmed in their own marginalization. Again, the darndest thing!
The common denominator between the group of protestors that behaved as if state sanctioned violence wasn’t really their issue and my coworkers that behaved as if corporate sanctioned violence wasn’t really their issue is that members of both groups were young white (or minorities who fathom themselves white), wealthy, and liberal.
I, living in this black body, can’t fathom the level of hubris that one must posses to think that one’s social class can protect them from such large societal woes, but perhaps American society wasn’t built for me to posses such comfort. Yet, here I am, living in a society that gives these people the benefit of being in a class that allots them the power to make positive changes in society, yet many will choose to side with societal norms as long as it remains socially and financially beneficial, but how much longer can these people live with these benefits? America is at yet another crucial junction, and all social classes need to become aware of what’s being given and taken from the people.
We’ve seen that those in power will side against women with the election of Judge Kavanaugh, we’ve seen that the President and Vice-President will not side with protecting Jewish Americans from violence, we’ve seen that the what little rights the LGBT community has are steadily being taken away, and there are very literally Latinx children separated from their parents and locked away in internment camps within the United States, yet our many of our liberal white allies and counterparts continue to propagate the status quo. What else does it take?
