But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking about the Present as If It Were the Past

by Chuck Klosterman

Pointing out how it’s not true in practice is so easy it doesn’t even require examples; all you need to do is look at the socioeconomic experiences of American citizens from varying races and opposing genders. But it’s not even true with people whose experiences are roughly identical. Take any two white males raised in the same income bracket in the same section of the same city, and assume they receive the same treatment from law enforcement and financial institutions and prospective employers. They’re still not equal. One of these people will be smarter than the other. One will be more physically attractive. One will be predisposed to work harder and care more. Even in a pure meritocracy, they would experience differing levels of happiness. “It is not the case that we are born equal and that the conditions of life make our lives unequal,” writes Karl Ove Knausgaard in his nonfiction novel My Struggle: Book 2. “It is the opposite, we are born unequal, and the conditions of life make us more equal.”