soliflux 리트윗함
when i was doing an intake form for a homeless shelter, i knew i was different than the crowd there cause the intake lady said i was the only person who could actually read the form and fill it out on my own
normally her job was to fill it in for other people, and she even struggled to read it herself
i corrected her on a line item and she started threatening to kick me out, until her supervisor came over to see why she was yelling at me, and then demanded that she fix all the prior forms she messed up on—this totaled over 5k, so she was quite angry
she refused to apologize to me, so her supervisor had to step in and do it on her behalf
as a result, i thought this was a poorly run homeless shelter, but i was later told this was actually one of the best in SF ever
it’s weird growing up and experiencing being so different than the people around you
it was one of the most alienating experiences as a kid to be able to read a tier above your peers as you couldn’t share the latest tom clancy you read, or even the NYT article on the iraq war (back in the ‘oughts)
getting kicked out of GATE because we were poor and asian in a white only town was a weird experience—the first i realized how gatekeeping worked (pun not intended)
if you think it’s crazy someone else couldn’t possibly read below a elementary school level, then you haven’t been paying attention to how our current president is doing his 2nd term and definitely live in a bubble
interacting with actual normal americans without disdain (like hilary’s surprised face at that kitchen) is absolutely key if you wish to bridge any gaps
i see how many of you PMC (professional middle class) types treat our midwestern friends who come to SF or LA, i see how the PMC types think their the elite, and to their credit it’s true they are quite rare when you compare them to the rest of america
hinge filters for example: if you mark that you don’t have a college degree, a good number of people filter you out; it’s a dealbreaker for most
having no high school puts me in an awkward place because i straddle and experienced both the very top and bottom of the rung, which results in the horseshoe theory of the opposite sides think i’m lying because they can’t fathom the activities of how the other side lives
i haven’t even gotten into how this varies across different countries—finding the low and highs in africa fundamentally changed how i view the world now, for better or for worse
this isn’t the most coherent thing i’ve written, and i still don’t understand how to process eating gold flakes and unlimited caviar and earlier that week watching a mob physically rip and hack a teen apart with blades for theft and dump the body parts on the dirt road (except they kept the hand that stole the item)
tl;dr: y’all in bubbles you can’t even imagine
Patrick McKenzie@patio11
It is the inverse of compassion to e.g. write a benefits application that cannot be understood unless you're capable of reading Harry Potter. There are, incredibly to me, people who will in the meeting object that everyone can read Harry Potter.
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