Something white folks like me from "middle class" backgrounds really need to fucking deal with is that privilege isn't just the advantages that put us a little ahead or give us a little more comfort or space or whatever.
Privilege is also having the real ugliness of the "American way of life" hidden from us.
There is no justice here. Our prisons are full of the suffering underclasses that are impoverished, criminalized, & enslaved. Unhoused people are treated like vermin to exterminate.
Financially, my family was at the bottom of the white "middle class", barely able to uphold the image.
There were times my parents barely managed to afford food for all of us. We went through some tough times.
You know what my middle-class ass did not have to deal with, despite that? Being dehumanized as a target for state violence. We weren't always considered the "right" kind of people, but we were firmly in the group: "people the police still speak to with a small amount of 'respect'".
@artemis My family was doing well until 2008.
The "Great Recession" and then the foreclosure crisis killed a ton of small businesses, and while my dad's roofing business still operated, that loss of spending power meant about half as many jobs a year.
And he was already 60 at that point, with no safety net here in the US. 50 years of paying taxes and he ended up with almost nothing to show for it. (Luckily they paid off their house.)
Hence why I'm not patriotic.
Artemis
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