{"id":19,"date":"2019-07-29T21:11:47","date_gmt":"2019-07-29T21:11:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/?p=19"},"modified":"2019-07-29T21:11:47","modified_gmt":"2019-07-29T21:11:47","slug":"my-privilege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/29\/my-privilege\/","title":{"rendered":"My Privilege"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I am a white male heterosexual.  Am I privileged? You\u2019re damned right I am…  <\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I might have been born to a single mother with only a high\nschool education and a biological father better absent than involved.  I could have happened to be born in Maoist\nChina, or North Korea.  I could have been\nborn in East Germany.  I could have been born\n100 years ago or more.  Can you imagine\nwhat it must have been like to be born in Medieval Europe?  If you survived to be 3?  I was born in 1964 in the United States of\nAmerica, a country that, for all its flaws and they are many, has been the\nsingle brightest beacon of freedom in the world for all of history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was I privileged by my parent\u2019s wealth?\u00a0 Absolutely!\u00a0 But my parents did not measure wealth in dollars.\u00a0 My father put off starting his own family until he was in his 40\u2019s over twice my mother\u2019s age.\u00a0 He\u2019d nearly given up on having a family of his own but, as the eldest son, had taken care of his mother and siblings when his father passed away from cancer at a young age.\u00a0 When his siblings and mother were well taken care of, only then did he start to build his savings for his own future life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father understood\u00a0 and conveyed that understanding to us his children, that wealth was knowledge, we weren\u2019t asked if we were going to college only where.\u00a0 My father understood and by his example taught us that wealth was wisdom; the wisdom to delay gratification and take responsibility for one\u2019s self and one\u2019s family and one\u2019s community; the wisdom to save and invest and resist the impulse to fiddle in the summer hoping winter never comes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My parents were not \u201cfeminists\u201d.\u00a0 But my father encouraged and supported my mother to continue her education and to earn a doctorate.\u00a0 He wanted her to be independent when he passed away (given their age difference he expected her to survive him by many years).\u00a0 My mother believed in being a strong woman but detested the movement she saw as trying to \u201cempower\u201d women to be more man-like rather than be powerful as women.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mother was raised dirt poor by today\u2019s standards as well\nas the standards of her day if you traveled far from her rural Georgia hometown.  My mother related to us, repeatedly, how\nworking as a child was not a summer occupation for spending money but a daily\nnecessity to help in the support of the family. \nShe related to us how she picked cotton to make her first quarter\u2019s\ntuition in college.  My mother was\nwealthy but her wealth was her audacity to believe she could climb out of the\npoverty of her youth and to become anything she set her mind to, a USAF officer,\na mother of 4, and a college professor. \nHer wealth was her understanding of the value of hard work, and\nperseverance through adversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was privileged to be the son of a Mother and Father who\nmarried and then<\/em> had children,\nparents who stuck together through some bitter arguments that are non-of-your-business\nbut could easily have broken up a less dutiful couple; parents who invested in\nthemselves early in life so they could have the resources to raise children and\nplan for their future; who invested in us, by providing a stable home,\nproviding support for school and who provided us with the example of their\nlives to teach us what to do with that knowledge.  I could mention more, my siblings, my aunts\nand uncles and cousins all of who provided support and held us and each other\nto high expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am privileged to be born a son of Marvin Hamilton Baugh\nand Mary Rose Turner Baugh.  I am\nprivileged to live in the United States of America in the 21st<\/sup>\nCentury.  I am privileged and proud and\nyou\u2019ll never convince me that these privileges have less to do with my success\nthan did my race or gender or sexuality by a factor of 1000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am a white male heterosexual.  Am I privileged? You\u2019re damned right I am…  I might have been born to a single mother with only a high school education and a biological father better absent than involved.  I could have happened to be born in Maoist China, or North Korea.  I could have been born […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}