dban3, I'd love to understand your thinking on that.
I grew up, if it's not obvious, during the status-crazed Eighties. I went to a private school because my parents both worked in various capacities at the school (in addition to their actual jobs) so we could afford it. I was regularly told I could not do or have things that the other kids did, and that was because their parents owned car mega-dealerships or were members of huge law firms and had money to spend, and we did not. At least, not on stupid jeans with special stitching, not on polo shirts with certain embroidered animals, not on ski vacations to Tahoe, and not on yearly trips to Disneyland.
After a brief period of feeling Less Than, I realized that the kids who thought that sort of stuff defined us as people and our roles in society were, well, idiots.
Now, it helps immensely that I come from a place of certain privilege as a middle-class white chick, and I fully recognize and acknowledge that fact. And hey, I dunno, maybe the little girl who sleeps in a car at night and whose only hot meal is the one she gets at school is only truly made aware of her circumstance when she realizes she doesn't have family photos with people in costumes with rubber heads, and that will be the final straw that crushes her spirit.
Not Going to Disneyland is not Real Poverty, is my point. Is there an MLK analog to Godwin's Law?
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