I wish you well
@Spekx.
Take care and I hope you find the support and solace on this forum that is helpful and meaningful for you.
The fact is I have only just been diagnosed with PTSD (within a couple of months) although I am told by my T that its likely that I've had it for awhile and its symptoms have only just recently become unmanageable.
I am so sorry to read this because it means you weren't getting any assistance or support and that is really rugged going. I know from experience. It is just hellish.
There are also scholarships for economic disadvantage, rurality and regionalism in Australia, as well as disabilities. I don't know how that translates in America, but I found different scholarships when I was googling, so it could be worth looking into when you have your PTSD symptoms managed. Maybe you can update the scholarship and financial aid department that you worked in (when you are much better of course) to make sure that they give students information about economic disadvantage or financial hardship, disabilities, rurality and regionalism scholarships instead of just those few minorities that you mentioned.
But when anybody tries to tell me that the word "privilege" can be associated with life it really pisses me off. It's like they are implying that my life has been all peaches and cream.
No one was saying that (this is a cognitive distortion - I have more cognitive distortions than most people, and now I am beginning to identify them.) - that was how you were choosing to interpret it. It is obvious from what you were saying that your life was not peaches and cream. You were missing the point, in my opinion.
Privilege doesn't necessarily mean you have an easy life - it just means that there are a whole lot of stresses, anxieties, glass ceilings, and lack of access to basic resources like education, housing and health
that you are unable to see due to your White skin privilege. And just because someone else receives some justice and a tad more fairness in their lives - it doesn't diminish you. It does mean we have to deal with some uncomfortable feelings unpacking what our Whiteness means - but that can be reinvigorating and in the end freeing.
And class is something denied in Australian and American culture. I just read a book
"Unequal Childhoods Class, Race, and Family Life," With an Update a Decade Later by Annette Lareau that is very interesting about this - and the researcher herself was shocked to find that class had a bigger bearing on children's life chances than race, but it doesn't mean it isn't important for White Skin privilege to be broken apart, because for even for young middle class Black men they were followed when in the shops despite having all the middle class, social, cultural and economic capital and ongoing Ivy League university education. And telling the truth means we are all empowered to make better choices for the next generation, the planet and all our futures, in my opinion anyway. So Hey I am immeasurably privileged by my White Skin Privilege and then doubly so by my Middle Class privilege - so I think your comments that it is not so simple that class needs to be taken into account has an important point to it. (This is how I read your posts. I think it is worthy of a thread.)
But it does not minimise that White skin privilege exists and is a real thing, because it does
. I have to be honest and say I found it very difficult to come to terms with my White skin privilege. Very hard indeed. I find it hard to come to terms with my middle class privilege as well. The intersection of class, race and gender is amazingly complex, but we all have PTSD so we are good at complex and intricate, because you have to become so, to manage your PTSD.
Now imagine if you did get a scholarship and
a poor, underprivileged, straight, white male without a mental illness with a patch of mild anxiety complained that "I don't have a mental illness, so I am not as lucky as some!"
And imagine if they went on about how they don't have any privilege, as despite having reasonable mental health, and being
"Poor, underprivileged, straight, white male apparently don't exist or don't need any help". How would you feel?
Do you think someone without PTSD can accurately assess what and how your life is like? You might disagree with me but I think that they won't.
Imagine if this poor, underprivileged, straight, white male (but without a mental illness) has experienced exactly the same type of trauma/s as you and that can happen - having traumatic events doesn't necessarily translate into having PTSD. So this poor, underprivileged, straight, white male is exactly the same as you but without a mental illness - and they are saying that all these people with PTSD are hogging all scholarships and really what happened with PTSD happened in the past, so people should just take responsibility and move on with it. He was able to. He has seen the movies and read the media, so the knows that all you PTSD people are dangerous and violent anyway - this is despite the research anthony has posted on this website. The facts have no bearing on how this person views you, a person with a mental illness who is getting special treatment - because you have PTSD. I don't know about you but I never feel I am getting special treatment because I have PTSD. I get reasonable accommodation sometimes but I don't get extras. And this
Poor, underprivileged, straight, white male without a mental illness won't talk to you about your mental illness, he won't even enter in to a dialogue, or listen to your point of view, until you accept that he, with his mild anxiety, is just as mentally ill as well (really we are all just mentally ill people from his perspective - there should be no differentiation) and should have the same access to scholarships as you do with your PTSD. Then he switches arguments so this
poor, underprivileged, straight, white male without a mental illness says that you shouldn't really be at university anyway, as you are taking a space away from a poor, underprivileged, straight, white male, like him, who is exactly the same as you but without a mental illness and it is not fair on those without mental illness. So he has exactly the same traumas as you and he doesn't have PTSD. How would you feel? How would you explain the worlds away that your experiences are to this poor, underprivileged, straight, white male? Would you think that there is a bit of thinking and pulling apart of his thinking that he might need to do to understand equity and social justice of your particular situation?
Think how you would feel - unless you have PTSD you don't really get it, there are many, many discussions on this forum about how frustrating, annoying, unkind, mind numbing, alienating and incredibly unfair that is. And that is the point of White privilege - you don't get it because you have grown up with all these unchallenged assumptions and invisible privileges.
White privilege is embedded in simple things like you walk down the street and no one assumes you are about to commit a crime or you move in and no one worries that the property values are going to fall and people assuming that all your people are criminals despite the statistics and facts that prove that this is not so. And when research shows that your community is targeted by police for offences that white people don't go before the courts for, on the whole. White privilege is embedded in your child being treated in ER and not being left to die or live with a severe disability as happened to one Indigenous woman that I know. Recently a lesbian couple that are good friends of mine didn't receive treatment for a very obvious life threatening medical condition because they were gay. That is heterosexual privilege or hetranormativity.
Privilege doesn't necessarily mean you have an easy life - it means that there are a whole lot of stresses, anxieties, glass ceilings, limited life expectancy and lack of access to basic things like education, housing and health and things,
like not being seen as a real human being by other people
that you are unable to see due to your White skin privilege. You are not participating in this thread any more so I will leave it at that. But I wanted to frame my answer in a direct answer to the way your presented your comments - so that you get that I read your post, heard it and responded to you.
