Truth bomb: For clarity, this is Robert Webb, not Julia Hartley-Brewer.

I love this story because it shows the depth of the ignorance in our privileged classes – of which Julia Hartley-Dooda (sorry; I’ve been reading Zelo Street) is a member and representative.

Practically everything this lady does is a result of privilege but – typically of the privileged classes – she doesn’t understand this simple fact.

And this is strange, because without it, nothing that has happened to her could possibly make the slightest bit of sense.

Robert Webb, on the other hand, does understand. And he dealt the benefits of his comprehension out to Ms H-B in a truth pill that, no doubt, she found impossible to swallow.

I look forward to being proved wrong, but somehow I doubt she’ll show any signs of new-found humility.

Robert Webb has deconstructed a journalist’s claim that her acceptance into Oxford was unaffected by privilege, demonstrating how the discussion about privilege shouldn’t be interpreted as a personal attack on an individual’s ego.

Data published by Labour MP David Lammy last year revealed that the proportion of Oxbridge offers made to applicants from the top two social classes rose from 79% in 2010, to 82% at Oxford and 81% at Cambridge in 2015.

Enter broadcast and commentator Julia Hartley-Brewer, who waded into a re-surfacing discussion on Twitter about the social barriers affecting education by declaring that: “I didn’t go to Oxford because I was privileged. I went to Oxford because I was clever.”

Comedian Robert Webb responded with an important point about how deep the effects of privilege run – and the importance of recognising where personal privilege may have helped evade social barriers that others face.

“I didn’t go to Cambridge because I was clever,” he tweeted. “I went because I was a white male from a stable family who encouraged me to work hard at an excellent state school. That’s all privilege. All of it.”

Source: Robert Webb takes down journalist’s claim she got into Oxford because she was ‘clever’, not ‘privileged’ | The Independent

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