Okay so this tweet from Leigh sort of sums up why fauxgressivism is super racist. This will be a thread but hopefully a short one.
First off, what Leigh is implying is more or less false. Harris' parents may have been educated but Warren's parents were privileged.
First off, what Leigh is implying is more or less false. Harris' parents may have been educated but Warren's parents were privileged.
Warren's parents owned their own home and were able to buy Warren her own convertible by the time she was 16. She had a full ride to college plus enough money to pay out of pocket for her education. So not only was she middle class but she was upper middle class.
Leigh's claims that Harris was privileged because of her parent's education is ... pretty fucking bankrupt if you'll excuse the pun. So, if you know anything about academia you know it pays shit. It's especially bad at present but it's always been not great.
Someone like me is lucky to get $15 an hour and you don't necessarily get paid for all the hours you work. There are people with doctorates who are supposedly employed but are not being paid at all. As in no money in. They live out of their cars. It is shameful.
But the other thing is still today and particularly when Harris was growing up there absolutely was discrimination in academia and it absolutely did effect your opportunities and pay. My Hungarian father was nearly routed into a program to weed him out b/c he was not born here.
My father is white. At present he doesn't have an accent. He sounds like he was born and raised in the midwest and there was still an effort to keep him from the big jobs just because he wasn't American. If that's what's happening to a white guy imagine Harris' parents' fights.
Now, to be entirely honest this hatred and jealousy towards people who have risen 'above their station,' is pretty common among fauxgressives. Numerous times BernieBros have tried to shame me for my education.
And I have noticed that while they tend to frame it around education costing money they never back down when they hear that I had to starve myself to stay in school. And they never have an issue with white men having doctorates.
Fauxgressives like Leigh often try to use economics and the language of privilege to silence women and people of color. But as with everything it's not about money. If Leigh was actually concerned about who was the more privileged she would have admitted to Warren's upbringing.
But it's not actually about money. It's about Harris' parents "rising above their station." Harris and her parents are of color and they are all well educated. All of them. Fauxgressives HATE that because it nullifies their arguments.
So, education is great and I will encourage anyone who will listen to me to stay in school as long as humanly possible EVEN if you're like me and have to starve yourself to do it. But academia has massive systemic issues and education is not a cure all.
I WISH my doctorate made me a millionaire but ... no. Quite the opposite actually. It gives me a lot of tools, resources, and no small amount of confidence because ... my dudes, I did an amazing thing. But the privilege I have is not exclusively or primarily based on my education
In my case my privilege mostly comes from being white. I get a little privilege from being straight, but it's mostly the white thing. Never have I ever slept on the street or in a shelter, but I've come razor edge close. But to a fauxgressive like Leigh that does not matter.
Leigh takes issue with Harris and her family because of racism. Again just objectively if we're talking only about money Warren is more privileged than Harris. The reason Leigh's so upset is because Harris' family worked hard and did well for themselves.
The GOP gets up in arms when there's targeted relief programs like Affirmative Action because those programs explicitly try to help undeserved communities and NOT white men.
If you introduce a program that benefits white men first or a program that blanket benefits everyone the GOP is generally happier to go for it. They'll put up a bit of resistance but it's pretty token in nature. Same for the fauxgressives.
This is my thing about fauxgressives. They are ideologically much more in step with the GOP and yet they're trying to use the language of privilege to dismantle the work of Democrats and in general remove people of color from positions of power.
I'm going to be explicit here. Leigh's failure here to talk about Warren and Harris in an honest manner is inherently racist. Her erasure of Black experience is racist. This is a racist tweet and that's why people are mad.
Leigh is trying to boil this down JUST to economics which you literally cannot do without whitewashing and ... just objectively Warren's family was doing better economically. If you're using just economics you have to apply it equally to everyone and Leigh isn't doing that.
Again, and I'm just going to hammer this home, Leigh's implication in this tweet is that Harris' family had more than they deserved even though they had less than Warren's and worked harder to get where they were because Warren's family is white and Harris' family was not.
I will admit, I kept it on the low-down because I knew people would assume different things of me given my demographic, but I've never really liked Warren. I had my suspicions about her back in 2016 and she's just been plummeting in my opinion ever since.
And I'm not even going to hold Warren responsible for Leigh's pretty racist presumptions here. But if we are honestly saying that lack of privilege = good leadership then Harris wins. I think that's a silly metric, but 1. Harris still wins on any other metric and 2. whatever.
So if you really want to talk about privilege outside of checking your own then especially if you yourself are white please please please please please have a decent and thorough think/read about racial privilege. Especially fecking now. Why do I have to keep repeating myself?
