Or something about dickish white male entitlement elicits his sympathy
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I was a university student working part time as a programmer. When the prosecution had finished making their case the judge said “that’s all very well, but we can hardly ignore his significant career.” He ordered me to pay court costs (his own wages, I guess), and then I walked without conviction despite a guilty plea. An annoyed police officer felt the need to tell me he’d seen people get seven years for the same charge. I did not reply, and a decade later I still don’t know what to say.
Well, it’s cool that you see and are willing to acknowledge how your privilege lightened your punishment, but there are many things you can do beyond saying something appropriate to help the disadvantaged. I hope you’ve found and done some of them?
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Some of them, yeah. Enough of them? Am I worth my own carbon footprint? The question haunts me perpetually. I think a good measure of charity is not how much you give but how little you don’t and by that standard I’d say I’m a pretty run-of-the-mill asshole.
The thing that landed me in court I did for a sick friend who died not long before the whole thing caught up with me. I didn’t profit from it and I don’t regret it (especially with such lenient judges AMIRITE!? High five? No?). Other times I have let people down for petty reasons and some things I will never be able to put right, but I guess that’s legal.
The best use I’ve found for my physical privilege is just to be in rough places. I’ve been volunteering at a soup kitchen for about two years and I’m the only person on our team who hasn’t seen violence. I’ve never won a fight in my life but there is no bastard too surly that we can’t be friends. Some of my colleagues could do better, we get a lot of the same faces every week and they still haven’t learned a single name, but it’s not a level playing field. I don’t get objectified, ignored or talked down to. Why can’t everyone just treat each other the same way they all treat me? I sort of get it but then I don’t.
Shit, what was the question? I’d say the answer is yes but your question sets a low bar and my ego doesn’t need stroking.
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