Lauren Graeve
“The most dangerous advantage of privilege is the power of the privileged to deny its existence.” - Colton Poore
My mother used to tell me in high school, “You didn’t grow up with a hard life” after I had been complaining about some everyday trivial bullsh*t. Ever since I was about fifteen years old, I pondered at that question and I still do very often today. Why is my life so much better than others? Have I actually ever experienced what it is like to really struggle?
The house I grew up in is thirty minutes from Los Angeles—close enough where we could enjoy the expensive shops and restaurants, the beaches of Malibu, and the endless concerts and shows; yet far enough away to experience LA without being bombarded by homeless and the working-class. In upper-middle class white suburbia, our mayor told us that racism didn’t exist because “our town is a nice town with nice people.” Apparently, racism doesn’t live in a town without more than one race.
My parents both have graduate degrees and work as high school teachers. My mother worked in the high school across town—the one next to the Section Eight housing. Those students didn’t look like me. My father worked in the high school in one of the poorest neighborhoods of the surrounding city. Those students certainly didn’t look like me either. My schools were filled with children who looked just like me—that is, until I came to San Diego State University.
My hometown competitive dance team was filled with other girls who looked just like me, too. Their fathers went away on business trips every weekend while their mother shuttled them between after-school playdates and backyard pool parties. Every May, just before summer, everyone would ask each other, “Where are you going for vacation this year?” More often than not, the answer was either Europe, Hawaii, or a month-long cruise. Don’t forget, this trip was in addition to the Thanksgiving, Winter Break, and Spring Break plans as well. These summer-long vacations signified more than wanting to spend time with family.
The suburban summer vacation tells a story of a family who is able to take a month off of work because they work in the corporate office instead of standing in line with the conveyor belt in the factory. The family can eat wherever they like while on vacation, because they did not have to pick the produce in sweltering fields on their hands and knees for fourteen hours a day. They can stay wherever they like because they do not make minimum wage to change bedsheets of beachfront suites. I often noticed as a young child on these vacations that everyone who worked in the hotels, restaurants, or airports did not look like me. Everyone who looked like me was sitting next to me in the aisle seat of the plane, working on a research thesis or watching movies from their latest iPad during the flight.
“When people think about white privilege, you think that privilege is basically making more money and having better opportunities,” Mora said. “But the data suggests to me that white privilege is also a cognitive mechanism that is also an insulating factor. White privilege can also mean having less stress, perceiving less risks. And that, of course, can be connected to having lived a life that has more wealth, more opportunities, being treated better” (Mizes-Tan).
When I got my first job working at the local movie theater, I noticed that all of the other girls in my first day of orientation looked just like me. We were selected by the manager to all work directly with customers in the Front of House. As I started working more shifts, I met a lot of the people who worked in the Back of House. These were the prep cooks, the clean-up crew, the busboys, the food runners. Almost none of them looked like me. It was even a joke amongst the other employees that the girls who looked like me could never do the scut work jobs in the back.
In sophomore year of high school, I met a girl who did not look like me. She told me that she drove forty-five minutes to our school every day because her mother was concerned for her safety at her local high school in inner-city Los Angeles. I ended up becoming friends with her, and we continued to have honors and AP classes together until graduation. She was on the varsity volleyball team, the president of yearbook club, and dreamt of becoming a journalist. Our senior year of high school, she was walking to her 2002 dented white Camry in the parking lot. A boy, who looked like me, hit her in his lifted pick-up truck adorned with the Confederate flag. Not many people saw the incident. He claims he “accidentally ran into the lower half of her body” when questioned by the principal. There was no report filed, no account for a suspension, and no consequences to his actions. Unsurprisingly, our principal was someone who looked like me. I will never forget the furious rage that boiled my blood in a way it never had before.
My first encounter with first generation college students, immigrant parents, undocumented family members, and financial aid came from my first group of friends in the dorms at San Diego State. A lot of those people continue to work minimum wage jobs while balancing a full class load because their parents can’t afford to pay their next grocery bill. When COVID struck and everyone lost their jobs, they all went on food stamps just to make it through. Not a single person in that friend group who looked like me had to suffer. I was fortunate enough to keep a job during the semester as a school-funded chemistry tutor. Friend after friend had their bank accounts depleted of what was left of their savings. Everyone who had to be cautious seemed to be in the same position—a child of immigrants, working a minimum wage job with an overcrowded schedule to finish in four years.
“Young people who perceive themselves as able to achieve something positive with arguing parents perceive that they have more influence in their communities, as well” (Šerek).
So why did I tell you all of these stories from my life? Because every single one has led me back to my mother’s original statement— “You didn’t grow up with a hard life.” These experiences have stayed with me forever and have taught me lessons more valuable than any sociology textbook. Taking my Sociology 101 class my freshman year of college was incredibly life-altering for me because everything I was learning about had happened in my life. I had seen how my competitive dance team in my hometown had gone on extravagant vacations while my college friends worked in the fields every summer to help out back home. One of my friends in high school, who happened to be a person of color from inner-city Los Angeles, could not freely roam the hallways walking to her next period. She was silently bullied and oppressed every day by the majority until the racism had become too black and white to ignore. Meanwhile, I got the coveted position of not working overtime in the back with the dishes or brooms because my skin color offered me the upper hand. Every definition, concept, and lesson I learned freshman year has played itself out quite clearly in 3-D, live action, complete with front row seats.
I think many people ask themselves the question if they could go back in time and change anything about their life. I like to think that I wouldn’t, because everyone knows that if you changed anything, then it would alter every other sequence of where you are right now. But what if I could use the Time Turner, just like Hermione in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, to go back in time without ruining the future? Would I have been nicer to people who were struggling with food insecurity? Would I have reached out to more people of color at my high school to combat the discrete racism that infiltrated the administration and teachers? Would I have stopped myself before saying certain song lyrics or derogatory phrases, even if the people they affected couldn’t hear them? I may not be able to change the past. However, I can use my influence and knowledge to impact society in a positive way after what I have experienced in my own life.
My hometown “of 125,000… is home to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
Donald Trump carried the area in 2016, just like Mitt Romney did in 2012 and
John McCain in 2008. And it was here, in 1992, that a jury acquitted the police officers
charged with beating Rodney King” (North).
During the protests that gained momentum in June 2020 following George Floyd’s death among countless others, my heart ached. That was the turning point in which I truly recognized the depth of my privilege. It physically hurt me to think about those who have been suffering. Suffering since their ancestors had been forced upon wooden ships, like cattle. Suffering since their ancestors were left to rot in fields where their bodies were commercialized for capitalism. Suffering since their ancestors were raped in those same fields while others were forced to watch. These people had grown up in the same America that I had been indoctrinated to praise as the “greatest country in the world.” I truly did not see anything wrong with my upbringing, my hometown, my childhood, or my friends until I had become close to people who were not like me. They did not share what I had been given at birth. I had been given the socioeconomic status of an upper-middle class White girl who went to piano lessons and church camp and road trips and days at the zoo and concerts filled with Bach and Beethoven.
People who did not look like me could not go to the store without being followed. They could not go for a run without being chased. They could not travel to certain wealthy areas without being suspected as a criminal. I was afforded the luxury of going almost anywhere and doing anything I wanted to do in America.
Strangers did not stare at me down the street because they thought I might be stealing, selling drugs, or starting a fight. The least I could do for people that did not look like me was to stand and use my voice for those who could not. I could not be scared to go in the street and hold a cardboard homemade sign against injustice if they were scared to walk across the same street that my feet laid upon. I decided to stand in solidarity with people who did or did not look like me, think like me, or act like me—but believe anyway that their fundamental rights were more important than my comfort within my privileged bubble.
Therefore, I have concluded, that no, I most certainly did not grow up with a hard life. That does not mean that my life has come without struggles—it merely means my life was not made more difficult due to the shackles of the socioeconomic struggle in 21st century America. Becoming aware of these shackles was the first step in a new direction in my life. I will never forget when I first noticed one thing about everyone I grew up with: They All Look Like Me.
“Century-old racist paradigms of white superiority, designed to justify white people’s sense of entitlement to comfortable lives, lives beyond crisis, still inhere in the narrative of Africa as being in permanent crisis” (DeGruyter).
Works Cited
(ed.), Rabea Rittgerodt. “White Privilege in the Time of COVID-19.” De Gruyter Conversations,
18 Aug. 2020, blog. degruyter.com/white-privilege-in-the-time-of-covid-19/.
Mizes-Tan, Sarah. “New Poll Suggests White Residents Less Worried About COVID-19. White
Privilege May Be A Factor.” CapRadio, 16 July 2020,
worried-about-covid-19-white-privilege-may-be-a-factor/.
North, Anna. “When Black Lives Matter Protests Come to ‘Copland.’” Vox, Vox, 9 July
2020,www.vox.com/21310027/black-lives-matter-protest-2020-california-simi.
Poore, Colton. “It’s OK to Acknowledge Your Privilege.” The Cornell Daily Sun, 7 Apr. 2020,
https://cornellsun.com/2020/04/07/guest-room-its-ok-to-acknowledge-your-privilege/.
Šerek, Jan, et al. “Does Family Experience Influence Political Beliefs? Relation between
Interparental Conflict Perceptions and Political Efficacy in Late Adolescence.” Journal of
Adolescence, vol. 35, no. 3, 2012, pp. 577–586., doi:10.1016/j.adolescence.2011.10.001.