Growing up, I lived an upper-middle class life in a beautiful home in the country. I had more than enough of everything I could’ve ever wanted. My parents were hard workers (still are) and saved well; they were able to send us to concerts, summer camps, missions trips, class trips abroad and family vacations, and we participated in whatever sports/art/music activities we wanted. Graduating third in my class in high school, I went on to attend college at a private, Christian, liberal arts university. I’m grateful for all of these opportunities, and in part, they’ve made me who I am today: a privileged and educated woman.
When we first moved to the city, however, I didn’t realize that my privilege could be a problem. I didn’t realize how it colored my view of people who grew up differently than me, how I interpreted everything through the lens of my own experience and judged accordingly. I didn’t notice how I subconsciously began to categorize people: the tatted up ones with big gold necklaces and low-hanging jeans, the moms in dirty pajama pants screaming at their kids in the street, and the thin, frail women roaming the street or the men walking home with another 12-pack. How the labels I put on them made all their other qualities much harder to see....
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