Financial Privilege Blinds Us From Seeing The Reality Of Other’s Deprivation
In our society everyone is not in the same social economical class and we never realized this while growing up until we got to a certain stage in our lives. There are people who were born with financial privilege, most of these people have a different perspective and view in life. You can’t expect them to have the same sense of reasoning, financially, with other people who were not born with financial privilege. People with financial privilege see a lot of financial possibilities, they want the latest material possession and the question is not “Can I afford it”? The question is “How Much”?. That’s financial privilege, and people that grew up with this lifestyle, sometimes fail to see the reality of other’s deprivation.
Imagine a child born with a silver spoon, grew up in a big expensive house, got access to anything he wanted that money could buy, went to the most expensive schools and hangs around with friends of the same social economic class just like him. Do you think this child will ever believe there is a sentence called “I can’t afford it”? Don’t take this the wrong way, it’s not their fault, it’s financial privilege. They think the financial privilege extends to everyone, that is why they sometimes seem surprised when someone claims they can’t afford a particular thing. This reminds me of an experience I had when I was much more younger, I think I was 7 years old at that time.
It was a Sunday afternoon, my dad always buys me pizza on sundays, it was like our weekly tradition, “Sunday Pizza”. We went to the pizza place to get my usual Sunday pizza, while waiting for my pizza, a lady walked in with 3 children and asked for the price of pizza, she was told the price of pizza and she gave this sad look and told her kids it was time to go that they couldn’t afford it. It seemed like she had underestimated the amount and the amount she brought, was not enough to buy the pizza the kids wanted. She left with 3 kids who were disappointed. In my point of view being a 7 year old little boy that always had pizza every Sunday, I found it weird that an adult couldn’t afford pizza for her kids. I asked my dad, why couldn’t she afford pizza, my dad replied “because the money she had wasn’t enough”. There is an ATM outside, she can go withdraw money and add it up to the one she had and buy pizza for her kids. My dad laughed and looked at me, that was the first day I was given the lecture of the concept of money and financial privilege.
I wasn’t born from a wealthy home but my dad always provided everything we wanted, not luxury, but the necessary basic things in life. He made me understand how not everyone is lucky to be from a home where money is not a problem for them. When you grow up, there comes a time in life where you have to be independent from your parents, you will be left to go fend for yourself. People try to go fend for their selves by getting a job or starting a business, most people get lucky and find a very good well paying job that can afford to pay their rent, house bills, car and pleasure. While most people don’t get that opportunity, they can only afford to place their needs in a scale of preference.
Scale of preference is satisfying your wants in order of their priorities and importance.
So you can’t afford to satisfy your desire to go on vacations when you haven’t paid your house rent, or afford to buy a fancy car when you haven’t settled your bills, feed yourself and pay your house rent.
But when you are born with financial privilege, you can do all these at still have enough money to do other things. I asked him if I had financial privilege, and his reply was “It depends”. Because what I might consider financial privilege is not what another person can consider financial privilege. He decided to use the woman as an example, her kids are seeing me getting pizza as financial privilege because their mom couldn’t afford pizza, but there are places my dad can take me and he won’t be able to afford some of the things they have there. For instance, my dad can’t take me to a jewelry store where authentic gold and diamond jewelries are sold and ask me to pick what I want. If we ever find ourselves in that situation, and my dad couldn’t afford the particular jewelry I wanted, I will see another kid whose dad could afford that as having a financial privilege.
