Yes, there are people who take advantage of government assistance. But defining an entire group of people by the worst elements is silly and childish.
There are people who genuinely need help and use it properly. You don't notice those people, because you are counting the misses and not the hits. My sister was one of them. She only had one kid, but her husband was in the middle of a career change after not making it as a preacher, and they manage a transitional housing complex for at risk women and their children, and got paid in rent. She used EBT to buy food for her family.
If you talked to people who are proud to make $275 a week on unemployment and do nothing else with their lives, then you have managed to link in with a certain percentage of every society. People who are happy to game the system and live in squalor exist, and they aren't going away. Now you have to ask yourself, do you want to punish their kids for their parent's choices in life? Do you strip the parent of welfare because his choices "make you sick" and let the kids starve because you don't like it that poor people are more likely to be addicted to smoking and they buy their cigarettes with cash? You also have to ask yourself, how much does it cost cities/counties/municipalities to manage a homeless population? When people don't get government assistance, do they tend to resort to criminal activity to make ends meet. You pay for this with tax dollars (police involvement, public defenders, jail/prisons, safety measures). So, you weigh the fiscal costs of paying for public defenders and how much it costs to house a low level offender in a state prison.
EBT systems drastically reduce cash on hand, and therefore street crime. They help people who actually need it, and some that take advantage. If you think living on welfare is some sort of easy life, you are sorely mistaken.
Your privilege is not something you are guilty of. It's not something you did wrong. It is a product of your upbringing, the good job your parents did (assuming here), and your social station. It also is a product of the color of your skin. (Assuming here again.)
As a brown person in Tennessee, I have had a service weapon pulled on me during a traffic stop for having a taillight out on my car. I have been told that they don't serve "towelheads" here because I am racially ambiguous enough to look Middle Eastern. Will I not get hired for the color of my skin? I have to constantly worry about whether some of these people around here is going to call me "boy" (happens about once every other month or so) and how I'm going to respond. I have to walk a tightrope because if I am too loud, then I'm the angry nigger, and if I don't stand up for myself, they don't hear how offensive it is. The privilege that white people have is that they don't have to worry about those types of things on a daily basis. It's not something you are guilty of, it just is something that exists.
So when someone talks about white privilege, they are not talking about how you don't have any worries of your own and you are living the Life of Reilly. They are just talking about the things that aren't on your plate. If someone talks about how they are owed government assistance, then they are being silly, and are not indicative of everyone who actually needs assistance.
If you live in a world where the taxes you pay should only go to help people like you, then you don't live in the America I grew up in.
There are people who genuinely need help and use it properly. You don't notice those people, because you are counting the misses and not the hits. My sister was one of them. She only had one kid, but her husband was in the middle of a career change after not making it as a preacher, and they manage a transitional housing complex for at risk women and their children, and got paid in rent. She used EBT to buy food for her family.
If you talked to people who are proud to make $275 a week on unemployment and do nothing else with their lives, then you have managed to link in with a certain percentage of every society. People who are happy to game the system and live in squalor exist, and they aren't going away. Now you have to ask yourself, do you want to punish their kids for their parent's choices in life? Do you strip the parent of welfare because his choices "make you sick" and let the kids starve because you don't like it that poor people are more likely to be addicted to smoking and they buy their cigarettes with cash? You also have to ask yourself, how much does it cost cities/counties/municipalities to manage a homeless population? When people don't get government assistance, do they tend to resort to criminal activity to make ends meet. You pay for this with tax dollars (police involvement, public defenders, jail/prisons, safety measures). So, you weigh the fiscal costs of paying for public defenders and how much it costs to house a low level offender in a state prison.
EBT systems drastically reduce cash on hand, and therefore street crime. They help people who actually need it, and some that take advantage. If you think living on welfare is some sort of easy life, you are sorely mistaken.
Your privilege is not something you are guilty of. It's not something you did wrong. It is a product of your upbringing, the good job your parents did (assuming here), and your social station. It also is a product of the color of your skin. (Assuming here again.)
As a brown person in Tennessee, I have had a service weapon pulled on me during a traffic stop for having a taillight out on my car. I have been told that they don't serve "towelheads" here because I am racially ambiguous enough to look Middle Eastern. Will I not get hired for the color of my skin? I have to constantly worry about whether some of these people around here is going to call me "boy" (happens about once every other month or so) and how I'm going to respond. I have to walk a tightrope because if I am too loud, then I'm the angry nigger, and if I don't stand up for myself, they don't hear how offensive it is. The privilege that white people have is that they don't have to worry about those types of things on a daily basis. It's not something you are guilty of, it just is something that exists.
So when someone talks about white privilege, they are not talking about how you don't have any worries of your own and you are living the Life of Reilly. They are just talking about the things that aren't on your plate. If someone talks about how they are owed government assistance, then they are being silly, and are not indicative of everyone who actually needs assistance.
If you live in a world where the taxes you pay should only go to help people like you, then you don't live in the America I grew up in.
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
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