Skill versus Privilege

(Morris, 2015)

Social Justice can be defined as "in a just society, opportunities, resources and services are distributed equally and fairly" (Arthur et al, 2009, p. 22). That distribution is, in my view, an underpinning principle of career practice, and helps to form the mindset of career practitioners.

It is when there is a lack of social justice that we get broadening gaps between the haves and the have nots; the rich and the poor; opportunities and threats; and those with rewarding work and those without.

Through a friend's Facebook post recently, I was exposed to a cartoon on skill versus privilege by Toby Morris (2015; Resarose, 2015).This story board very neatly and clearly illustrated how circumstance can affect societal 'success' or 'failure'.

I think Toby's work sums the skill versus privilege gap up well.

In addition, on Resarose's repost of the cartoon (2015), there's an interesting comment by Butters25 which says "A study was done where some people started with more money [and dice rolls] than others in Monopoly, and upon winning they claimed it was because of skill". Butters25 also posts a link to the which relates to the TED talk by Paul Piff on "Does Money Make You Mean?"

And Paul Piff does find that yes, more money - regardless of how you have earned it - does make you mean.

Wow, we can be such entitled creatures. It takes us such a long time to grow out of it, too.


Sam

Read more of an exploration into this issue on The Wireless's site here.

References:

• Arthur, Nancy; Collins, Sandra; McMahon, Mary & Marshall, Catherine (2009). Career Practitioners' Views of Social Justice and Barriers for Practice. Canadian Journal of Career Development, 2009, Volume 8, issue 1 (pp. 22-31)
• Morris, Toby (2015) PencilSword #10: On a Plate - a short story about privilege. Retrieved 2 June 2015 from http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate
• Resarose (2015). Hitting a little to close to home. Retrieved 4 June 2015 http://imgur.com/gallery/h82vC
• Piff, Paul (2013). TEDxMarin: Does money make you mean? Retrieved 4 June 2015 from http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_piff_does_money_make_you_mean