As a millennial born in the early 80s, I know a good number of people from my college years who, I have learned over time, live a similarly charmed life.

Looking back, there was always something a bit odd about these folks: namely, that they seemed to be far more concerned than I was about what to do with their time. They seemed to really be concerned about having the "right" kind of job, or the "right" kind of life. When I was working customer service or slinging cocktails at the gay bars to pay my rent and food costs, they were researching grad schools (only the best), or traveling to the third world on short-term humanitarian missions. One took several years off from work without much apparent anxiety. Another jumped from city to city, making large numbers of fair-weather friends and throwing himself into startup after startup, never settling down or really committing to anything or anyone. Another married a successful artist, and raises the kids in Santa Monica. I know a few living very bohemian lives, in high-minded intentional communities, writing books to teach their peers about some obscure facet of culture. Some went into the corporate world, where they adequately fill a suit and sometimes write about M&A on a blog.

I've worked with lots of these types as well of course, in the tech industry. They have no concern about being their own angel, and care a lot about diversity, but have no qualms about asking you to work late, or over the weekend to help "the business" meet its latest pivot. Needless to say, all of these people are white.

My husband's family is white too, although quite poor. His father used to break and shoe horses, and can track an animal through a desert. The sort of man who relies on Medicare to pay for his liver removal surgery, his lymph-node removal, his spinal growths removals, and any other places where the cancer metastasized, but is out fixing a truck engine soon after, with his oxygen tank dangerously close to the welding torch. This happens in the sort of countryside where your trailer gets broken into, and the thieves drag your refrigerator over to their trailer not far away up the dirt road, leaving a trail you can see from space, but the police can't do anything. In an earlier time, he would have solved that problem himself, but he doesn't hear so good, or see so good thanks to a couple of strokes and type-I diabetes. The wife has MS, so he spends most of his time taking care of her.

When the grandfather shot himself, the gun was one of the most valuable things he left behind. Despite losing her retirement to shady financial management, after 30 years as a charge nurse in the ED, the wife couldn't wait to blow what little they got in the will on a new hot tub. Better enjoy it now.

Of course they'll have to sell their sandy little plot in the next year or so anyway, before it becomes worthless due to the water table drying up. My husband does what he can to bail them out when unexpected bills arrive, and maybe he ought to spend more on their comfort. God knows his sister can't help from behind bars.

My family is different, my parents paid for my bachelor's, just not my master's, but we can tell some similar stories from a couple generations back. My grandfather had to cut off his own father during the depression, essentially dooming him, because the old man stupidly lost everything he owned, and his only hope was the wage my grandfather earned, after a career as a ship's engineer, shoveling coal into the furnaces of buildings in NYC. This is the ugly side of progress no one wants to talk about: how people get left behind. How the parents fight a losing battle, and the kid grows up knowing their only hope is to get the hell away from it all. These callous things long to be forgotten.