I’m a white first generation student from a working class family. I am often frustrated with the assumption that whiteness equals socioeconomic privilege (which sometimes simply means middle class stability, certainly a privilege). I am included among other white people as socioeconomically privileged in the way people talk about SES class-based things but I am always shocked to realize my whiteness provides me the automatic assumption of not having money problems. I don’t identify with many fellow white students because of my lower income upbringing and current realities. But I experience white privilege and it is uncomfortable.
