I recently saw an online argument between a friend of mine and a friend of his about Brett Kavanaugh. My friend posted an article about Kavanaugh’s rage over not getting what he was entitled to for the first time. The article also happened to mention that Brett Kavanaugh is white. This prompted the friend of a friend to call the author of the article a bigot and say that judging someone by their race is wrong no matter the blah blah blah.

The friend of a friend was white. You know that person. You’ve been on the internet in 2018.

Usually I dismiss guys like this* but something that he said piqued my interest. He brought up Kavanaugh earning his place at Georgetown Prep and then Yale and on and on. I thought that was interesting. “He earned it.”

A couple of things with that. First, earning things in the past doesn’t qualify one for prestigious appointments in the future, an appointment to the Supreme Court, for example. Second, there are plenty of people who earned similar degrees from similar institutions. Exeter, Andover, Choate, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford. There are many permutations of qualified people all of whom earned their places. But, third and finally, did he earn it?

I’m not just being a knee jerk liberal here. I know of which I speak. I went to a private Jesuit High School then on to an Ivy League college. (It was Cornell and I’ll be the first to admit that Cornell ain’t Yale but stick with me for a sec.) I played soccer. I was in ski club. I was on the executive council. In my yearbook*, I had that same haircut that Kavanaugh had in his year book. Somehow all upper middle class suburban boys manage to look like that. In college I was in a fraternity and slammed many a beer with guys with names like Prince and Sully and Chip and Gorg.

Hearing about his past, I’m finding the similarities between Kavanaugh and myself are a little discomforting. Thankfully, my ambition wore off around age nineteen and I’ve been professionally stagnant ever since. No law school or distinguished career in law that would necessitate a background check for this guy!

But I know what the start of his academic journey looked like and I’d like to address earning it. I’ll just talk about myself here.

So what did I earn when I was at school? I took an entrance exam to McQuaid Jesuit. I passed it. So, I earned entry. While there I completed my assignments and took my tests. I earned all of my grades, which were good. They put me in the top ten percent of my class. I earned my place at Cornell and I took all of those tests* and I earned a degree in chemical engineering.

Here’s what I didn’t earn. I didn’t earn two parents with advanced degrees both of whom were invested in my education. I didn’t earn their choice to buy a house in a neighborhood with a nationally ranked public school. I didn’t earn my father’s choice to send me to a private Jesuit school, nor did I earn his salary that paid my tuition at said school. I didn’t earn my neighborhood and its culture: college educated professional parents were the rule and not the exception. I didn’t earn my peers, the vast majority of whom took school seriously and made me want to study harder. I didn’t earn a safe upbringing in which I didn’t have to worry about anything except school and extracurricular activities.

I think I’ve gotten a little off topic. I’m not talking about grades or the schools anyone went to. Well, I am but that’s not my point. The point is that I’m realizing more and more how one’s upbringing and environment not only influence them but make the outcome of their lives almost inevitable.

Americans love to talk about how hard they work, how they busted their ass. If it’s not that then it’s a grandfather who came to this country with however many cents in his pocket and had to scrape by to make it. So, don’t tell me about privilege!

When I think about myself, I think, yeah, I did the work but it was work along a path that had been laid out before me long before I could walk. Granted, I ended an improviser and web developer, so, clearly, something went wrong on this path along the way. Perhaps I lost it or perhaps I purposefully got off of it (that question will haunt me for life, I’m afraid) but the point is, it’s hard to say that the time I spent walking upon it was earned.