hmmm

Continuing adventures of a very small cubicle. In that there aren't any adventures. There is, however, a creepy amount of CNN reading. That can't be healthy.

So this is going around my flist. Privilege meme, below cut. Honestly, I had to read it a few times, because these are--to me--deeply random questions.



The list is based on an exercise developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. The exercise developers ask that if you participate in this blog game, you acknowledge their copyright.

To participate, copy and paste the list (below) into your blog, and bold the items that are true for you. (comments added in italics)

Father went to college
Father finished college
Mother went to college
Mother finished college
Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers

Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
Were read children's books by a parent
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18

The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
Went to a private high school
Went to summer camp
Had a private tutor before you turned 18
Family vacations involved staying at hotels motels count?

Your clothing was bought new before you turned 18. - sometimes. It depends on what year.
Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
There was original art in your house when you were a child
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18.

You and your family lived in a single family house

Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home - does owing one and a half times the value of the house count as owned?

You had your own room as a child
Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
Had your own TV in your room in High School
Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College

Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your family
Went on more than one cruise with your family
Your parents took you to museums and/or art galleries as you grew up
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family. - literally or figuratively? As in, did I see the bills, or as a child, was I aware that the utilities were hideously expensive?


Okay, I give up. What is that supposed to prove? Somehow--call me crazy--a question on whether one could afford electricity and heat at all, whether one's family vehicles were repossessed regularly, and whether or not pawning things for food might have been slightly higher priority than museums.

Feel free to explain how I'm wrong. I just have no context for what these questions are supposed to be slanted toward--for privilege, there's a very odd mix of socioeconomic/educational without actually hitting the main points and what appears to be culture. Is there supposed to be some kind of correlation between education and parenting skills/parental emphasis on certain things and not others?

ETA: context here from siderea, picked up from another livejournal.

Even with that context...this still doesn't make sense. I have a vague thought on the standard being set here is lower-middle class, reading through, which explains why so many of the questions are an utter mystery for me, but I'm not sure what specifically is being tested for. Involved parents, educated parents, really motivated kid while in school?

Comments

[lemonbella.livejournal.com]

I cannot select any of those as applying to me and I wouldn't describe my upbringing as particularly under-privilidged.

I think the fact that trust funds are mentioned at all should discount it as having a neutral reference point.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Okay, so it's not just me that was thrown completely by that one? The mix is so *weird*--it's a combination of middle-middle up to lower-upper (or heck, what is the subdivision on upper), and everything else just confused me on where they wanted people to start thinking of privilege and in what sense; wealth, class, education, parental involvement, heck, with the museum/art thing, that could be a location issue if the parents were rural and worked nights, even if they had sufficient transporation and the child had interest.

I have to wonder what kind of kids they were giving this to; the baseline on this, to me, would be the difference between upper and lower middle class, but even then some of the assumptions on that are odd.

Er. IN short, yes.

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I looked at the meme and said, "A, this was written at least 15 years ago (technological recency notwithstanding), and B, it was written for first-year classes at an Ivy League, 15 years ago when Ivy League demographics were radically different."

I know people to whom this survey would be useful/eye-opening (in some respects, I am that people too), but, when applied beyond that narrow audience, it becomes increasingly incomprehensible.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*thoughtful* Does it? Hmm.

Since I don't have that background, the questions seem to follow a series of--huh. Assumptions that certain things are privileges in one class and not another, and I'm not sure I agree with some of these things being that kind of a privilege. IT feels like--and I go back and forth on this one, because every time I read it, I get struck anew by something that feels off--that the entirety of it is equating several different socioeconomic classes on top of several different styles of parenting as well. It's--confusing.

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

Well, my other comment on it is that it's written with a particularly narrow vision of high social class: a vision that defaults to Anglo/aspirational WASPiness; a vision strongly anchored in the northeast (note that heating bills, not AC or gasoline, are mentioned); a vision that isn't center-urban but isn't rural either.

Which is how I concluded that it was a long time out of date. The markers of high social class have changed a lot over the years, and don't match what's on that list. (For one thing, hospitals and doctor's offices and free library programs routinely push reading aloud to children, so that marker can potentially encompass the entire middle class and quite a bit of the working class. That's relatively recent, as an across-the-board, well-funded push, after studies proving that it helped cognitive development.)

Similarly, credit cards have changed radically in the past 20 years. Used to be, you had to have assets to get a card, at any age; that's just not true any more.

I wonder what this survey would do about the recent scholarship development at Harvard -- upping the maximum family income cutoff under which the student gets a free ride to something like $100K. I know there's been a lot of inflation since I went to college, but, dude! And to think of all the loans and grants I cobbled together!

[akacat]

A lot of the things on that list are so *variable*.

My grandpa has a trust fund -- it functions in every way as his checking account, and he earned every penny that's in it. He has it instead of a "checking account" because it made things easier for him when grandma died, and it'll make things easier for my mom and aunt when grandpa dies.

I went to a private high school for a year and a half (we moved halfway through my sophomore year.) There'd been some violence at the public school, so my parents pinched pennies a bit to afford the parochial school. Other kids' parents were doing the same, and a few of my classmates were there on full scholarship.

I also went to 'summer camp' every year -- for a whole week each summer. That cost my parents a whopping $150 (adjusted for inflation.) That's not cheap, but it's light-years from the blue-blood full summer camps.

On the trust thing...

[orange852.livejournal.com]

I perceived including "or a trust" with parents as a catchall for "your education is being paid for by the efforts of someone who is not you," which still actually excludes other relatives such as a rich uncle or grandma.

In other words, a trust fund baby could mask a certain level of privelege by not putting paid for by parents in bold and allow the false assumption that they're paying their own way.

If that makes any sense.

Still, it is a strangely random set of statements even in the context of what a freshman would relate to in a classroom setting.