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Comment by ttt0 | Hacker News Reader

> Are public programs that benefit my children going to be cancelled because they tend to include disproportionately more children from our group than other groups? Will I be forced to go private to get the teaching I need for my children?

Well yes, this is what they mean when they talk about "combating privilege".

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I think the most efficient and ethical way to combat privilege is to spend more resources to bring underprivileged people up, rather than taking away resources to bring privileged people down. In many respects that is the only viable option. For example, kids who have been abused are going to need more support to reach the level of achievement of kids who live in homes free of abuse. You can't solve this by taking away the advantages of the more privileged group (i.e. abusing the children who haven't been). You can only address this issue by providing more support for victims of abuse.

> I think the most efficient and ethical way to combat privilege is to spend more resources to bring underprivileged people up

In the context of primary education, and I mean this in the most sincere way possible, what if they don't want to? You're ignoring the agency of the students. A lot of children, occasionally my younger self included, see it as their duty to rebel against the educational system. So how can you improve someone's educational attainment against their will?

Students, even in gifted programs, push back on the demands that are placed on them. I did too when I was in school, and I was in gifted and advanced placement programs throughout my schooling. I'm not sure to what extent this is specific to privileged or underprivileged groups.

There is nothing a school can spend money on to fix this problem.

Likewise, there is nothing the occupying US army can spend money on to solve extremism in Iraq.

They would have to entirely reinvent their organization to be something that it’s not. This is the NAACP unwisely putting pressure where it’s not needed (schools) instead of where it is needed (legislators). Blame the NAACP for failing at the governmental level and trying to backdoor into the schooling level.

You're free to believe whatever you want and it's really none of my business, but what you're saying is just not going to happen. It has been tried many times before and it's a Herculean task. Way too hard, if not virtually impossible and it always ends up like this. If you support combating privilege, just be prepared to lose everything. It's fine by me, but let's not get disillusioned about what it actually means.

Privilege is like the emperors clothing. Once you reject the meta-narrative the hyper-realty crumbles.

The funny thing is that if they really tried to combat the privilege - the rich families connected to the ruling class - the privilege would combat them into the ground, so they wisely chose a weak opponent that vaguely resembles the rich (common skin color).

That is exactly what combating privilege is. Instead of bringing people up it is about bringing people down.

And it's totally fine and fair

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