Not to downplay womens sufferage and sexism (because it was wrong) but a substantial portion of straight white women act like they have had it every bit as bad as the truly persecuted and enslaved. Like sure, your great great grandmother didnt have the right to vote, while she was sipping lemonade on the verandah of the plantation while the people her husband owned worked the fields and cleaned the house.
You might not have been allowed to drive the car, but you got driven places you wanted to go in it.
Where the person thinks they started from nothing no matter how elevated their position was.
In America, this is the internalized narrative that everyone has, it’s our national mythology.
I’ll do you one better. I am a working-class born American, who went to Harvard and became part of the upper-middle class. Many people I meet in my adult life, tell me I should have never been born because my parents were unable to provide me with college/grad school education out of their own money. They actively hate and resent the idea of people working their way up in life because it makes them feel bad about themselves. Sometimes I get told that my lack of wealth, makes me MORE privileged than them. Literally last month I was out with someone whose parents had PhDs, who started lecturing me no how ‘oppressed’ they were by having such successful parents, and my uneducated rural upbringing was ‘more privileged’ than theirs because ‘your starting point was so much lower and therefore it was easier for you to achieve things’. It was wild. But I encounter such attitudes very frequently. It’s basically the sentiment that affirmative action is cheating and allowing ‘unworthy’ minorities to attend schools and ‘displacing’ more deserving wealthier white/asian students.
The upper classes do not want anyone to achieve what they have, they want to horde it for themselves. In their own minds, they are the victims of an evil and undeserving working-class who wants to steal from them.
discrimination is not always straight forward as we think, it’s a heirarchy , even one group that is discriminated is capable of discriminating others which are lower than them
Liberals like to conveniently forget that being a white woman is also a very privileged position in our society.
Most White women want to maintain their privileged position too.
Not to downplay womens sufferage and sexism (because it was wrong) but a substantial portion of straight white women act like they have had it every bit as bad as the truly persecuted and enslaved. Like sure, your great great grandmother didnt have the right to vote, while she was sipping lemonade on the verandah of the plantation while the people her husband owned worked the fields and cleaned the house.
You might not have been allowed to drive the car, but you got driven places you wanted to go in it.
That assumes they recognize the class struggle.
The problem can be exceptionalism.
Where the person thinks they started from nothing no matter how elevated their position was.
This leads to the thought that anyone below them didn’t try as hard as they did and any attempts to uplift will belittle their accomplishments.
Messaging must maintain the uplifting of the entire working class. Then they will support you because the self interested have something to gain.
In America, this is the internalized narrative that everyone has, it’s our national mythology.
I’ll do you one better. I am a working-class born American, who went to Harvard and became part of the upper-middle class. Many people I meet in my adult life, tell me I should have never been born because my parents were unable to provide me with college/grad school education out of their own money. They actively hate and resent the idea of people working their way up in life because it makes them feel bad about themselves. Sometimes I get told that my lack of wealth, makes me MORE privileged than them. Literally last month I was out with someone whose parents had PhDs, who started lecturing me no how ‘oppressed’ they were by having such successful parents, and my uneducated rural upbringing was ‘more privileged’ than theirs because ‘your starting point was so much lower and therefore it was easier for you to achieve things’. It was wild. But I encounter such attitudes very frequently. It’s basically the sentiment that affirmative action is cheating and allowing ‘unworthy’ minorities to attend schools and ‘displacing’ more deserving wealthier white/asian students.
The upper classes do not want anyone to achieve what they have, they want to horde it for themselves. In their own minds, they are the victims of an evil and undeserving working-class who wants to steal from them.
discrimination is not always straight forward as we think, it’s a heirarchy , even one group that is discriminated is capable of discriminating others which are lower than them