I was raised to always be respectful of others but looking back on my experiences with certain people i’ve met in college, i found that i’m considered by some to have had a privileged upbringing ( i grew up in a middle class suburban neighborhood in southern california). I’ve grown apart from some of these people who i previously considered friends because i realized they find my privileged upbringing as something to disrespect apparently, in the eyes of those who grew up not as well off. to my knowledge i’ve never intentionally done anything to offend them and have made my upmost effort to be respectful and connect with them as equals, but in retrospect it makes more sense to me that the reason i always felt slightly left out or like a lower-tier friend to them might have been because of this. i was always the one to reach out to hang oit, the one to go over to their place, the one who drove places whenever no one else had a car in college, always bringing beers or food when coming over, but when i was going through an insane period of hardship (literally like 3 different types of life catastrophes happening all at once) i felt like i had no one to talk to because anytime i brought up wanting to talk with a friend about it a plan would be made but they would keep rainchecking on me in favor of other group activities. on occasion i have heard one of these guys talk crap about people who’ve grown up privileged and know this person to be an advocate of “staying in your lane” whatever that means. maybe because i didn’t grow up in a city with a higher crime rate i didn’t learn how to be a real man or maybe they took some part of my behavior as a sign of weakness? i wish i realized sooner these were not my people as clearly they view respect as something to be earned, or that others have to give them “something to respect” but i’m still confused a couple years later how things played out this way because in the beginning i felt that we actually were good friends. thoughts appreciated
edit: thanks for all the responses and insights. i’ve come to the conclusion that how privileged of an upbringing someone had should be something to consider in future potential friends in this current social climate. i want to be proven wrong though. it sucks that it has to be this way because upbringing is rarely something anyone has a choice on, and i lived most of my life believing anyone could be friends with anyone.
5 comments
Disdain for the rich and privileged is a real thing, and it usually goes beyond the normal in-group/ out-group behaviors. Same deal with some uneducated people hating college grads, ugly people hating beautiful people, lazy people hating hard workers, short people hating tall people, fat people hating fit people, etc.
It’s rooted in envy and perceived inadequacies, and it doesn’t easily change. The big predictor, which you can use when assessing friends) is a person’s locus of control… do they believe they are in control of their lives and can shape their future (internal locus of control), or do they believe in fate, destiny, or believe they’re powerless to change their lot in life (external locus of control.)
My recommendation is to ditch those friends and find people who are either in your socioeconomic status grouping, or find richer or poorer people who don’t care.
People not being there for others when they need emotional support or other kinds of real support/help vs being there for the fun and the good times is extraordinarily common and is not limited to whether or not people respect you. This is one of the reasons why I see no real point to friendship, unless you’re just looking to entertain or be entertained.
“Respect” has different meanings and ways of applying it. To me, there’s a big difference between treating people with respect by default just because they’re human beings or because that’s how you want to be treated vs having respect for another person based on who they are, what they’ve experienced or how they behave. They’re not comparable.
Personally, the issue I have with “privileged” people is not that they’re privileged, in and of itself. It’s that they tend to have no real idea that they’re privileged and assume everyone has the same reality, the same opportunities, etc, and/or that they often offer opinions and viewpoints that are from the place of privilege without taking time to learn about people who are not privileged, to put themselves in someone else’s shoes or to expand their thinking/understanding, and are adamant that their opinions/viewpoints are correct.
The fact that you think this is about growing up “in a city with a higher crime rate” or being “a real man” are examples of what I’m talking about, i.e. you have no idea what viewing someone as privileged is really about or what it really means to be privileged vs not privileged, and how privilege does/does not impact friendships/relationships (i.e. as I said above, most of the time for most of us, “friends” are not there when we really need them).
Firm believer in respect is earned, not given. Interactions of any kind are give and take, 50/50. That’s how it is. You get back what you put in.
Did your family rly raise you 2 be respectful? Think bout that.
As who can’t get along with privileged people I’d say in the perspective of unprivileged and also in a objective way.
Unprivileged people believe you have resources then your problems isn’t serious enough so most of them don’t care much.
Seems like you’re kind of people pleaser. Treating humans with human decency isn’t equal to respect. Respect forms when you admire about someone’s qualiti(es), those qualities can kindness, intelligent, physically strong or whatever. In relationship, respect has to be mutual or it’ll be like leader-follower role.
As someone who never treats bad whom I consider friends intentionally I personally believe without respect any kind of relationship is doomed to be fail.
Make friends with people who’re similar to your level. I do the same and it works out dine cause we can easily understand each others.