Why I Hate Privileged People

In my Honors Civics and Economics class, we recently had a debate on issues like welfare, outsourcing jobs and healthcare. My class is white with the exception of 1 boy. None of them have disabilities of any kind and all of them are healthy teenagers. The majority of the class are moderates, leaning to the right a couple of conservatives and the minority being liberals, like me.
So I suppose you already know where most of the class stands on the issues we were debating.
Healthcare was predictable. They (the students against) said it doesn’t work. I (a German-American citizen) said I had experienced American system and the German universal system and said their allegations of waiting in line was not true, because even my dad, who is not a German citizen thinks the Germans have a better system. This article agrees with me.
But my conservative peers argue that Germany is the exception and failed universal healthcare is more common.
As frustrating as that was for me (and probably a lot of people on this site who have pre-existing conditions and/or have to pay more for being a woman) this next tidbit was even MORE frustrating.
Welfare should be monitored and only people who actively look for jobs can get welfare. Which, at least most of them can’t deny America needs welfare (well actually they couldn’t deny it AFTER they were told numerous times by the supervising adults that not all people on welfare are on welfare due to be lazy.) But when I argued that not all people can look for jobs and get them because they are living with sicknesses, physical disabilities and/or mental disabilities. Because some of these people are in hospitals and that may be a bit of a roadblock and there are many jobs that don’t have the necessary things they may need to work, like wheelchair ramps.
But oh, did they prove me wrong! With all their privilege, they looked at me as if I were an imbecile and told me “That’s what charities are for,”

I didn’t even bother moving on to my next point which was that single parent can’t afford daycare to look for jobs, because they would condemn the parent for having a child. Which is hypocritical because they would condemn them for an abortion too. I didn’t bother pointing out that charities need donations in time and money to help people, and THEY complained about the 30 hours of community service they have to do this year. I did not point out that I was one of the very, very few in my class that actually donated to charities. I did not mention that being white would actually help them get a job over a person of color. I didn’t even go into the disproportional number of people in jails or homeless that were people of color compared to the actual population of them living in the US. I did not mention that my mother and therefore my brother and I would not be here if the German government hadn’t helped put her through college. I didn’t mention that she had relied on the healthcare system that THEY condemn when she was a sick, close to dying child. I did not mention that my grandmother was in the German governments care because she is one of the all to many in my family with psychological problems. I did not mention that I might have problems like these and it’s a real fear for me that I won’t be able to support myself because of it. That I am 15 and have struggled with eating disorders and depression, common in my mom’s family, and that I am scared that the rest of the problems in my family will come to. I did not mention that my family also has a lot of Factor V cases, including my mother and without universal healthcare I might never have gotten tested for it because I don’t want the insurance to deny me.
I am sorry to say, I let people down. For the first time in my life, I just shut up and I shut down. After 1.5 hours of arguing against people to stubborn to see the many colors of an issue, I gave up and let them win.
I stared at my binder and tried not to cry about how unfair life is and that these white upper middle class conservatives are the future. That they would be in corporations and be elected to government offices and never have to really face the issues that other people have to deal with.
Why? Because they are privileged and narrow. And privileged and narrow CANNOT see the issues as they really are.
*This could go under many issues such as
Deep Thoughts
Disability Rights
Education
Health care
Racism.
All of these are very real issues and I acknowledge the problems of all of these, but I believe the main issue of this particular post is privilege and class. Though I think there needs to be a category for Privileged People.