Agree with the sentiment here, but privilege is the wrong frame. Growing up affluent means growing up with the ability to be free. That's not privilege. It's what *everyone* should have. It's not unfair that some have it, it's unfair that some don't.
Being able to go to college without debt, being able to raise kids and see a doctor, not having to worry about food, shelter, being able to have leisure and make non-coerced political and social choices... That's not privilege. That is what every person in America should have.
You also don't need to grow up poor to notice homeless people on the street and think 'hey that's bad they should have homes.' You just need to not be a sociopath. There but for the grace of God and all that. I mean we have many religious traditions making this point.
I used to believe in the privilege frame, then I realized it is designed to strip everyone of rights. It is bad and people should stop using it. It is basically Puritanical self-flagellation for white liberals who feel guilty about their whiteness instead of dealing with it.
I'm white and Jewish. I didn't choose that. I could go off and bathe in perceived anti-semitism to legitimize my voice, but that's crap. There's virtually no anti-semitism anywhere I've ever been, but there's plenty of weaponizing of Jewish identity to justify political goals.
Describing the misuse of power as individual privilege is incoherent. We killed 500,000 people in Iraq. Saying I have "privilege" because I wasn't murdered in Iraq in 2003 stretches the concept to incoherence.
Privilege as a metaphor has aristocratic connotations. If you see people who are free as 'privileged,' the solution is not to grant freedom to everyone else, it's to strip freedom from those who have it. The right stole the rhetoric of citizenship for a reason.
White liberals need a way to acknowledge their own identity without hating themselves. This is a real thing among white liberals and it is intensely confusing, especially to young men. The whole "we all lie about our upbringing right guys?" is the extreme creepy version.
