The Curse of Privilege

So this is what it’s like to be a writer wannabe.  My mind’s a total blank.  It doesn’t help that I’m still sick, plus now my back is killing me, so I can’t escape this blank screen, even if I try.

I almost did another Ohio rant, but what’s the point.  It’s Ohio, ’nuff said.  Nothing new about petty brawls, corruption, and illiteracy.  Just another day in Ohio.  Oh wait, I lied, I feel another rant coming on…

I admit it, despite decades among the Common People, I’m still a snob from a privileged background.  All the poverty in the world can’t seem to take that from me.  I know people can’t help being disadvantaged and ignorant.  It’s built into the system, and perpetuated.   Still, stupidness and illiteracy make me crazy.

It’s like the proverbial healthy white male trying to grasp racism and inequality, when he’s never had to really grapple with it his whole life, as others do.  He’s always going to have that blindness to real, legitimate issues that can’t be dreamed away.

Here I am, experiencing what the other half gets to live with—poverty, crumbling infrastructure, contamination, discrimination, various -isms— pretty humbling stuff.  I should be compassionate, but I’m still looking down from my great heights of—the level flatlands.  It’s like going back a century, only without the charm, just the depression.

It’s almost Dickensian sometimes.  Sewage is constantly backing up into our basement, and no one, the city, the landlord, wants to take responsibility for the non-functional ancient infrastructure, because who cares, it’s just some poor dumb women tenants.  Occasionally some fat guys park a truck out front, roll their eyes at the sewer, drink beer, and leave.

It’s Ohio.  Or Flint, Michigan, you name it, any place in the USA where uneducated poor people don’t count, and stupid greedy politicians make money, but not to fund infrastructure, education, or anything considered progressive.

The curse of privilege is that I’ve been there, done that, and now I’m here at the other end, trying to believe what I’m seeing.  Whereas people who are used to this deplorable status quo never aspire or vote for anything better.  They have nothing to compare to.  They’ve been indoctrinated to submit and resign themselves to being treated this way.  They are convinced they deserve it.  And the ignorance self-perpetuates.

So much for my mind being a blank. There’s always ranting. It seems to be my default setting.  Somebody’s got to do it.  It’s like a curse.  Is it genetic or environmental, or both?  Probably Yes.  Resistance Is Futile.

r.i.f.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 thoughts on “The Curse of Privilege

  1. The funny thing is, what got me started had nothing to do with sewage. It was one of those typical of Ohio trending ‘news’ items, this time of a big high school brawl in Youngstown, which is a really rough place. The comments by parents, ironically complaining that the kids’ ignorant behavior was the fault of parents, were so illiterate, it was almost hard to make out what they were spluttering about.

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