Yes, yes, my white privilege. Let's start with my graddads. One fled Ukraine after most of his brothers had their index fingers amputated by their mom to keep them from being drafted into the Czar's army. They lived on potatos and didn't have shoes until they were teenagers. Pogroms were common. My mom's dad worked steerage to get here and once here worked 18-hour days as a stable hand until he could afford to live in an actual apartment. My dad got here at age 2 with his family. They were so poor he had only two left shoes. They lived 6 to a room in a Lowell tenement working in a linen mill. My granddad saved every penny and was finally able to open a grocery store in which he worked 18/7 until he died. My mom and dad were the first in their families to go to college (my dad had to work in the grocery 8 hours and day and still managed to earn an engineering degree after 5 years. My mom finished college after raising my brother and me. Good thing, because my dad dropped dead when I was 15, We lost his business, our house, and almost everything else.
So much privilege, so little time.