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Memes of Use #1: Barriers to Access


There's a meme I love showing a group of kids trying to view a baseball game from behind a fence. The tall kid can see over the fence perfectly and needs no help. The shorter kids are standing on different heights of phone books. From the baseball field angle, each kid looks like he's the same height. It illustrates both the potential error in perception (from the baseball players' view) as well as the fact that some people have a natural advantage whereas others need a little help. The tall kid has privilege in this regard.


As a tall kid myself, I also know that it is far more likely that I will decapitate myself on a low tree branch, but I don't use this unrelated fact, vis a vis seeing baseball games, to begrudge those short kids their phone books. After all, what other purpose could a phonebook possibly have?


The meme above illustrates something different.


The person standing on the tall pile of cash is unable to see out the window because excessive wealth blinds him. Similarly compromised is the person with neither cash nor books (education). The person with a small pile of education sees just enough to know what he's missing.


The big winner, of course, is the person with enough education and enough cash (but not too much cash) to really enjoy the view.

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