From: Amjad Obeidat, Amjad.Obeidat@nsc.com:

This article can be mapped directly onto our community. To a great extent, the readers of AMILAnet (as well as other similar lists in silicon Valley) represent a privileged segment of our population that thinks it is merely "lucky".

One thing that is worth noting is that privilege is usually oblivious to itself! (i.e. it does not recognize its status as privilege).

[From Today's NY Times]
George W. Bush's Secret of Success

By GWENDOLYN PARKER

 George W. Bush recently revealed that though he believes his name and family may have afforded him opportunities, he thinks his successes in business are the result of "results and performance." To me, it's a telling admission. For in this one instance, George Bush, the son, is telling us we should disbelieve the obvious.

 I don't know a lot about Governor Bush. But I am familiar with the world he has traveled in: the world of prep schools and Ivy League colleges, of corporate executive suites and Main Line firms. The world where a phone call to "Old Binky from Yale" is often all that is needed -- to get the door opened, the wheels greased, the deal done.

 As a black woman, the child of a teacher and a social work administrator, I was not necessarily made for that world. I certainly wasn't its typical face.

 But I traveled its corridors for many years. And it's with that intimate familiarity of what happens behind closed doors that I respond to Mr. Bush's claim, a claim that denies the very real force that luck and privilege exert in our society. It's a force that allows plum internship jobs to be filled by the children of Ivy classmates, a force that allows a personal introduction to bump you to the top of the list.

 As Americans, we don't like to talk about either luck or privilege.

 Some survivors of disasters can never make their peace with their miraculous survival, arbitrarily bestowed. Traveling around the country, we are reminded of the disparities of life, of the ladle that drops a bucket of good fortune here and nary a thimbleful there.

 And luck in the form of privilege extracts its special toll -- deflating your ego, for starters. During six months I spent in Zimbabwe in 1997, any illusion that my good fortune was solely linked to my own cleverness or willingness to work hard was easily shattered. Could I really be 500 times more hard working or more clever than the Zimbabwean woman who rose every day at 5 A.M. and labored until 10 at night, even though my salary was at least that multiple of her salary?

 Luck in the form of privilege also extracts responsibility, connecting you to others in an intimate way. My elders cited Scripture to describe this yoking: freely ye have received, freely give.

 By some standards, my luck has been tempered by both race and gender. But I was born into a comfortable, middle class home to educated, concerned parents. I attended a prep school and obtained a Harvard degree. I work hard and hope I have made use of the opportunities and talents I've been given, but there are no solitary laurels I can rest on.

 There is no way to tease out the advantages threaded through every part of my life. Even those intangibles in my arsenal -- my self-confidence, an ease with verbal jousting, an ability to hope -- not one of them is the product of unaided effort. Even 25 years after graduation, my Ivy League degree still opens doors. No matter how long or how hard I might work, I can never leave the truth of my life, and the luck that is part and parcel of it, behind.

 So I painfully marvel: How can George W. Bush, born into a family whose wealth and power and privilege far outstrip my own, not similarly see the truth about his own life?

 And if he knows the truth, as common sense seems to dictate that he must, why does he say the things that he does? Because it is part of the Republican mythology? Because it makes a better story? Or because, somewhere inside himself, he is really unwilling and unable to accept that truth?

 I wouldn't think less of Governor Bush if he just admitted that he'd been lucky, certainly very lucky, and left it at that. Few of us have led luckless lives, and there is neither merit nor shame in the truth.

 But I worry about a Presidential candidate who feels compelled to re-form luck and privilege into primarily the sweat of his own brow. I worry particularly about how many American lives he'll need to misinterpret so that he can continue to tell the story he likes to tell about himself.

 Governor Bush may be popular. He may even emerge as the victor the Republicans crave. But we Americans need a dialogue based in truth, not in the stories of a son wanting to prove his independence from his family. If George W. wants to guide our lives, he must first own up to this crucial aspect of his own.

Gwendolyn Parker, who was an international tax lawyer and marketing manager on Wall Street for 10 years, is the author, most recently, of "Trespassing: My Sojourn in the Halls of Privilege.''