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b_b · 3787 days ago · link · · parent · post: Millennials Are Less Tolerant Than You Think -- Science of Us [Yea or Nay?]
I think "confronting history" is very difficult, because any specific individual can look at himself and say, "I never owned slaves," or "I didn't keep a black person out of college." It's not difficult to make a leap from there to not seeing oneself as culpable in any way, even though we're all part of a long historic contingency that is supragenerational. If I'm rich and you're poor it's much more pleasant for me to think that I'm rich because I went to college and worked my way into a good job. To analyze why I had that chance in the first place is to subvert my own sense of self, because in some sense, we're both historical accidents. Luck, for better or for worse, is a bigger part of our lives than we like to suppose.