re: When did you first become aware of your privilege?

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Is Tom Brady “privileged” because he had a great HC? frick no. No one with any sense would argue that.

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People argue that all the time. What are you talking about?

When I worked hard in public school and received academic scholarships to Loyola and LSU.

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I was raised upper middle class, attended great catholic schools, etc etc, and it all set me up to be successful as an adult. I can recognize and be appreciative that I was born into a stable and healthy environment.

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This is misguided thinking. The term "privilege" by its very nature implies something that is unearned, some perquisite that arbitrarily and automatically attaches to a certain rank or class. But growing up in a stable environment is anything but arbitrary and automatic. Stable homes do not spring up out of thin air of their own accord. Rather, they are the direct product of the hard work and discipline and talent of the parents involved. And in turn, those parents may have benefitted from the hard work and discipline and talents of their own parents. And their parents before them. And so on down the generations. If you trace the geneology far enough, you typically encounter one of two patterns: (1) a prodigy who made a quantum leap in socioeconomic and educational status during a single lifetime, which benefitted all of his or her heirs; (2) incremental, cumulative improvement in socioeconomic status from generation to generation, which benefits each newly born set of children. Most Americans, even wealthy Americans, can trace their family lines back to the humble circumstance of immigrants or poor laborers. Few are those who descend from the gilded royalty of the Mayflower. When a child is born into a stable home, he or she isn't experiencing some unearned and random "privilege," but is instead inheriting the sweat from the brows of his or her forefathers, the accumulation of decades or centuries of toil and deliberation and effort and study and advancement and luck and perseverance. Growing up in stable home where education and accomplishment and character are prioritized may be an advantage, but it is not a privilege. No one should be forced to renounce the hard won legacy of their ancestors. Nor should it be ripped from them by government action, sophistry, or public shaming.

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well this is where we are going to just disagree

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You can’t quantify it. Under your broad definition of privilege, there would be some many variables that trying to isolate any of them would be a task in futility.

But our society will only focus on a very few factors that may not even be directly-linked variables and then claim this overarching conclusion which is complete and utter horseshite.

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When a child is born into a stable home, he or she isn't experiencing some unearned and random "privilege," but is instead inheriting the sweat from the brows of his or her forefathers, the accumulation of decades or centuries of toil and deliberation and effort and study and advancement and luck and perseverance.

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So they get the benefits of work they didn’t do? How are you failing to see that this is a privilege?

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The child who had no choice of where they were born?

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They still fail and thus remain in the lower class.

Believe it or not, a shite ton of people move out of a lower class lifestyle in the US. I don’t hear a bunch of people clamoring that “it’s a class thing” when they describe them.

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So they get the benefits of work they didn’t do? How are you failing to see that this is a privilege?

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so a strong family structure is privilege now

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It's been the default position for hundreds or thousands of years. It's the norm.

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Correct.

For a long time we properly described its failure as “dysfunction”

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It's been the default position for hundreds or thousands of years. It's the norm.

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having 2 legs is also the norm, but its still an advantage over a person with 1 leg

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so a strong family structure is privilege now

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When there’s a real alternative that isn’t nearly as beneficial and the child has absolutely no ability to choose which one he or she is born into?

Yes, absolutely.

You think people born into shitty 1 parent households wouldn’t trade if given the opportunity?