“He was talking about his background, his life. Must one always follow talking about their life with how much harder it would have been for others? What is even the point?”
To quote Pizzagirl (though I suspect she was using it in another context), “it is about the smarminess”. Mitt Romney was talking about how he struggled, how he understood the struggles of ordinary americans or those struggling to make it, and used the example of the basement apartment and so forth as an example of how he could empathize. He is making it seem like his struggles starting out were the same thing as a poor family or a working class family trying to make it…and it is like comparing apples and oranges. Like i said, Romney didn’t have to worry about if his business failed that he and his wife would be homeless or have no medical care, he didn’t have to worry about it because he came from a well off family that would make sure he never knew real want, the person from a modest background is working often without a net. I don’t doubt that Mitt Romney is a bright guy, I think his success in the end was his, and while politically he and I won’t see eye to eye and I am not a big fan of Bain Capital, I also respect the fact he built that. What I don’t respect is him recanting a story like that, with the implication that his struggles were the same as those who are really struggling, or that his success was just as hard as it is for someone who is truly struggling. His infamous “47% speech” was a rap at people who ‘don’t pay taxes’, which is about a group of people who don 't make a lot and is de facto accusing those people of living off everyone else (even more ironic when Romney’s net tax rate was less than most people in the middle class, I think he was paying around 11% of income on taxes).
Paul Ryan is an even more egregious example, when he cited working at a McDonald’s as a teenager as proof that working in a ‘dead end job isn’t’, it was smarmy, it was obnoxious, and it was directly aimed at the people who work in such places, often because it is all they can get, and saying “well, I started there, and look where it ended”. He was born with a platinum spoon in his mouth, had the best of everything, and he dares to claim that working at a McDonald’s makes him qualified to judge those struggling?
The point isn’t that Romney once struggled, the point is that they are successful, the point simply is when you recognize the gifts you have been given, as I was, you also need to have empathy for those who didn’t , when you understand not everyone has the things that were given you, you try and find ways to help others.
I’ll give you an idea. Years ago I read a study about gifted kids, something talked about on here and other education sites a lot. The study profiled gifted kids from blue collar families versus white collar kids. One of the things they found out (and I can attest to this personally) is that the big differences was the white collar families recognized their kids gifts, and actively pursued trying to find things for them, whereas with the blue collar kids the parents attitude was if the kid was really bright, the ‘school would do something about it’, and it created a huge disparity in outcomes for the kids (and one of the things that was interesting was it wasn’t economic level, the white collar and blue collar family incomes were often relatively similar). I do advocacy work for gifted kids in the schools, advocate for gifted programs that target kids and actively recruit them, especially in working class areas, because I realized that to give those kids a shot, you have to kind of make the effort to recruit them.
I think with privilege, a parody I read of the old “Horatio Alger” stories that people somehow still take as gospel, comes to mind. “Dick was a plucky sort of kid, and he figured out there was money to be made in matches. He bought some matchbooks for a penny a piece, and sold them for a nickel. With the money he made, he bought more matchbooks for a penny, sold them for a nickel, and with that money he could buy even more, since the matchbooks in volume were half a cent…and soon he was doing well…then his grandfather died and he inherited a mansion and a yacht and lived happily ever after”.
I didn’t grow up wealthy, my dad was an engineer, my mom was a brilliant woman who in many ways never found herself, we didn’t have much in the way of luxuries, we never as a family went on vacation, had new cars, etc…but I also had a lot of gifts I was given, I wasn’t born to a racial group many look at and say “welfare recipient”, I grew up in an area where there were safe places to play, I went to schools that may not have done as much as they could for me, but I didn’t have to worry about getting mugged or stabbed or shot, my parents because they were educated could help guide me…my wife was an immigrant, she grew up in a fouled up family, lived in really bad areas where she had to be in fear of her life (to this day, even though we live in a place where the only intruders are the mutant squirrels that must have gotten zapped by the pharmaceutical companies just up the road, she doesn’t feel safe unless the doors are fully locked, and will shake if she finds out the garage door got left open at night), she grew up being something of an outsider, so I also am gifted with knowing that I had it good, that while I have worked hard for everything I achieved I also was in a place where I could achieve, but I also see from my wife’s example that some people are born in muck and mire that is not so easy to achieve out of. When you understand privilege, when you understand how having a leg up works, then you can also see what not having that privilege means, and find ways to help people achieve even though they don’t have that , that’s all. Privilege doesn’t negate success, having privilege doesn’t make a person the perpetrator and those without it victims (though there are people who believe that on the granola headed left), one of the reasons Bill Gates funds education the way he does is he realizes how much he was gifted with, having a dad who was a successful executive, going to a private school that gave him access to computers at a time few had it, having a dad who encouraged him to go for his dreams, and he wants to return it. Andrew Carnegie in some ways was an SOB, but he also understood some of the things he was given over the years, and tried to give back in ways to help others. As opposed to a Paul Ryan who reads Ayn Rand and says “yup, I am one of the great elite that produced things solely through the sweat on my brow, and everyone else is garbage”, it is the latter who need to wake up and realize they didn’t do it alone.
