Member-only story
Having Standards Does Not Mean Privilege
It’s time to challenge this constant song that if we hold to certain values, then we must be privileged.
I recently wrote a story which contained the following paragraph: Today, I was looking for one Triple A battery. I only needed one, but would have been prepared to buy two. However, I was not prepared to lay out six bucks for four batteries, especially as I only needed one, and because my luggage allowance is very limited, I would have had to leave them behind.
In my interaction with the above reader, I mentioned that I was able to purchase single batteries in many countries — Scotland, South Africa, and I even bought one in Malta after I went to St. Paul’s Bay and found a down-market store. I simply said to the shopkeeper, “I would like one battery.” She turned round, put her hand in a box, took one out, and asked for seventy cents. It wasn’t a tourist store. It was the place where the locals shopped.
That’s the background to the comments I posted in the illustration.
Standards are not an indication of privilege — they are the way of civilized societies
Over the past few years I’ve noted that one can be accused of being privileged whenever one…
