Elle Beau ❇︎
2 min readSep 26, 2021

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I completely agree that having so many children who don't get enough to eat and so many families one paycheck away from being out on the street is terrible. And, if you cannot comprehend how this is not a zero-sum game where only one thing can be important and "win" the dire problem award, then I'm sorry, you aren't actually a progressive, and are in fact a part of the problem.

Privilege means that you never have to face or consider things that other people routinely grapple with. You don't get to decide for others whether or not that is actually traumatic or disruptive for them or if it is worse than some other problem because it's not a contest.

Racial Trauma is a medically recognized diagnosis that comes from exposure to constant depictions of racism in the media (such as repeated stories of unarmed Blacks getting killed) which echo the person's own experiences with living in a racist culture. "Discrimination is a traumatic experience that can cause similar symptoms to PTSD, as well as depression and anxiety."

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/racial-trauma#who-is-affected

Recent research shows that women who have been sexually assualted are more prone not just to depression, sleep disruptions, eating disorders, etc., but also to strokes and other health issues later in life. And 1 in 3 women has experience with sexual violence.

These are just a few examples that don't touch on all the ways that people can be marginalized and oppressed. The question is not whether or not those things are worse than being poor. The issue of privilege is that those are things that you as a white man have never had to think about or deal with. That's what privilege means!

And your persistent refusal to admit that rich and middle class Blacks experience racism, that rich and middle class women experience marginalization and racial violence, means that you are hiding in your white man's world just like the guys I described in the OP. Poverty is a serious problem. Eliminating that will not fix those other issues because they are related to a social dynamic that has little to do with ecomomics.

And, I seriously doubt that me saying any of this will make any difference to you at all, so I'm going to go focus my attentions somewhere else.

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Elle Beau ❇︎
Elle Beau ❇︎

Written by Elle Beau ❇︎

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother, I'm a sinner, I'm a saint. I do not feel ashamed. I'm your hell, I'm your dream, I'm nothing in between.

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