Thread by @scalzi

1. So, in talking about class privilege and white privilege here in this thread, I realized something, which is that in no small part due to the high school I went to, my own experience of white and class privilege is (slightly) different than most folks. Let's explore!

2. To begin, two clarifications: In the US, white privilege and class privilege are SUPER-related, both as a matter of correlation and causation. More than 96% of the 1% are white. Come on. They're intertwined and inseparable. This is important for later in this thread.

3. Also, when I noted the "boarding school college counselor" thing, I was meaning it as "in addition to white privilege" not "instead of white privilege" and did it poorly enough that people wanted clarification. My mistake, BUT it made me think on my own white/class thoughts.

4. And they are that *in my head,* class and whiteness have been slightly more separated than they are in the US, and part of that has to do with my high school, The Webb Schools of California, which is a high-end private boarding school in the LA area.

5. As context (and as many of you know), I grew up poor in working-to-middle-class southern California communities in the 70s and 80s, so with mostly white and Latinx folks. I went to Webb on scholarship and boarded there, even though I lived nearby.

6. Webb was my first real glimpse into 1% lives, and for the 80s it was fairly diverse: We had a lot of international students (mostly from Asia and the Middle East, but also Latin America) and the kids of financially successful Indian and Asian immigrants...

7. ... in addition to the white California elite, and the occasional scholarship kid (waves).

(Webb was not great with local Black and Latinx students -- some but not a lot. It would make an effort to change this in recent years and has made some progress as far as I can see.)

8. So it's fair to say that my first real contact and connection to the upper class, and my introduction to class divisions and issues, was *different* than most US folks, and also, *unrepresentative.* Webb was/is upper class, but it's a more diverse/global upper class...

9. ... than the upper class of the US as a whole -- not removed from it but wholly of it, either. Inasmuch as my formative experience of wealth was an admittedly unrepresentatively diverse one, in the context of US wealth and class, I still find myself tripping over the fact...

10. ... that it was and *is* unrepresentative, and continues to be -- because the alumni network of Webb is very tight. I'm now well off myself; my own relationship to it is still informed by this more diverse/global experience I grew up in, more than where I now live.

11. This is not a cookie bearing statement AT ALL -- class privilege is a set of issues to be confronted and questioned whether one fancies oneself to have a "diverse/global" outlook on it or not, and my having to adjust my brain to the realities of US class privilege is a thing.

12. But, for me, it does *explain* the little bit of mental dissonance I have about whiteness and the US upper class -- and consequently, can give a little context for the people who *notice* I've implicitly made that distinction when, in the US, it's not significantly there.

13. What the point of this thread? There is none, other than me typing out something I just fully realized, and by typing it out, making concrete something I need to work on for the future. Welcome to my brain! The typed out part of it, anyway. /end

POSTSCRIPT: Forgot the cat picture as a reward for reading all the way through. D'oh! Here it is! With two cats, even!