Posted on 07/10/2015 1:40:15 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
I attended the Edmund Burke School, one of Northwest Washington’s small private prep schools, where college acceptance rates were close to 100 percent, students called our teachers by their first names, and — despite our de facto liberalism and the lip service we paid to the ideal of diversity — we were mostly white and well-off. Most of our parents were left-leaning architects or journalists, federal employees or lawyers, who thought their children would thrive best in small classes and had the means to make it happen. I was sheltered, and I knew it.
~snip~
I’d never had a job, but I knew where I wanted to find one. I’d spent the first few years of my life in Adams Morgan, a funky, diverse neighborhood and, in my eyes, the antithesis of Friendship Heights, the leafy, gleaming enclave my family had moved to. A few weeks before graduation, I spent a Saturday morning pacing 18th Street, stopping at every establishment with a “help wanted” sign, gravitating toward the places that fulfilled my vision of the city’s seedy underbelly: the late-night spots, the greasy pizza joints, the hookah bars.
I’m hardly the first privileged young man to go looking for grit. Others, from George Orwell to Chris McCandless, also have chafed against the neatness of their upbringings and tried to step outside their comfort zones. They found this to be the only tonic for their increasing unease with and burgeoning cynicism toward their backgrounds.
Nor, I’m sure, was I the first to learn that my mission was doomed to fail. No matter how blue-collar my surroundings, I’ll always carry the marked advantages of my educated, middle-class upbringing. Despite my total lack of relevant work experience, I leapfrogged straight toward management.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Fails.
I guess he’ll just have to move into his parent’s basement and stay stoned.
ahahahah THANK YOU!
Huh. As the product of middle class people who embraced their inner lower middle class (read: too cheap to pay for my college education), I was forced at 17 to work in a sweat shop typing pool at Metropolitan Life in New York City. It taught me to be a right-wing capitalist.
Happily, my brother, a saint, stepped in and subsidized my education. That, along with my income, got me a BA.
Most of us don’t play at this crap.
Seems to be an arrogant ass, which does not really help.
No way.
I see a job at the WH or State Dept.
Especially if he's gay.
How horribly discriminatory.
I read the story, but I do not see a trace of “white privilege”? Am I missing something?
What a load
Wow, did he draw some strange conclusions. And a major in geography? Sheesh.
Parents should have made him due more yard work.
If he really wants to eliminate the privilege of his mental ability, I’ll gladly beat him in the head till he has a TBI. That way he’ll never be privileged again.
His “privilege” put him in management nearly right away.
Probably because the “white privilege” to which he refers actually just means “civilized Western cultural upbringing”.
He probably spoke respectfully to people, using understandable English, showed up on time, and didn’t steal anything that wasn’t nailed down.
In the places he was looking, that would make him “management material”.
You should read the comments section.
It’s a hoot!
Motivated to Work Privilege!
So, he wanted to be a Jack Kerouac / Hunter Thompson kind of guy but, sadly, ended up in management.
Poor baby.
So this "Falafelshop" job is not only where you were slumming, it's the best paying job you ever had.
I read the story, but I do not see a trace of “white privilege”? Am I missing something?
____________________________________
Yeah. You are.
From the first sentence - and all through this essay - he expounds on his white privileged upbringing.
I attended the Edmund Burke School, one of Northwest Washington’s small private prep schools...
Most of our parents were left-leaning architects or journalists, federal employees or lawyers...
I’ll always carry the marked advantages of my educated, middle-class upbringing
Dude, let me set you straight. Your parents are upper-class, not middle-class. Middle-class parents don't send their children to prep school. Middle-class parents are not architects, journalists, federal employees (think about that one) or lawyers.
Middle-class parents might scrimp and save to send their kids to a private school. They are middle-management, small business owners, and long term employees at large companies.
When you don't see where you are from clearly, you can't make judgments about where other people come from.
He writes like he's the first white teenager ever to work in food service.
It doesn't seem to dawn on him that his desire to perform for people - like getting himself published in the Washington Post - is what got him on the register.
Those other guys had no desire to deal with customers or stay late to do the paperwork.
They wanted to do their job with as little fuss as possible, collect their pay, and go home.
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