In the Virginia Colony, a social and economic system centered on the elites was intentionally racialized to keep it that centered on the elites. Racial anxiety was manufactured and then it was stoked to keep people divided.

Fast forward to the present day, and we continue to see the way this system is refreshed and reconfigured, and how it continues to keep the focus on individuals and not the broader system. 

One of the reasons it is so hard to talk about privilege is because it contradicts the bootstraps myth that is pervasive in our country. The bootstraps narrative tells us that each one of us individually struggles, succeeds, or excels strictly based on how hard we work. 

If someone has obtained more, they must have worked harder. If you haven’t accomplished what you’d hoped, then you should have worked harder, too.

But the idea of “Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” did not always mean what it has come to mean today.

Notes and References:

1. "A host of systemic factors has created the ongoing segregation and racial and ethnic disparities throughout the country in educational attainment, wealth, and quality-of-life that we see today. These factors have included local, state and federal policy and investment decisions, discriminatory practices within the private sector and individual actions and biases."  There are many deeper analyses of the way this has continued to manifest over generations, including Richard Rothstein’s 2017 book The Color of Law, or the accompanying 18 minute video summary you can find at segregatedbydesign.com; Ava DuVernay's 13th (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8); and Heather McGhee's The Sum of Us (https://heathermcghee.com/). Systems drive disparities along lines of gender and class and other forms of marginalization as well, but in a society that remains very racially segregated, there is a clear intersectional impact that is centered on racial disparities. Race is always a factor.

2. Linguist Ben Zimmer has traced the idiom back to an 1834 newspaper, in which one Mr. Murphee is satirically described as being “enabled to hand himself over the Cumberland river or a barn yard fence by the straps of his boots.” It appears throughout the 19th century, often in the company of other colorful metaphors for ludicrous impossibilities, such as “sitting in a wheelbarrow and trying to wheel yourself” and “getting rich by taking money from one pocket and putting it in another.””How the ‘bootstrap’ idiom became a cultural ideal; By Melissa Mohr Correspondent; Oct. 04, 2021; https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/In-a-Word/2021/1004/How-the-bootstrap-idiom-became-a-cultural-ideal

3. "The myth of meritocracy: who really gets what they deserve?" Kwame Anthony Appiah. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/oct/19/the-myth-of-meritocracy-who-really-gets-what-they-deserve

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