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

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

I did the list too, and I think this list needs updating:

Did you have access to a computer at home in high school?

Did the computer have internet access?

Broadband?

Did you have access to a computer in high school?

Did you have access to programming classes in high school?

Did your parents drive you to school most days before you got a license?

Was your parents car was as nice as your classmate's?

Did you parents volunteer to pack you a lunch most of the time?

If you needed help on a school project, would your parents help you?

If you needed it, would your parents buy you more than $10 worth of supplies for a school project?

More than $20?

Was your allowance the same as most of your friends?

Did you parents listen and talk about popular music when you were a child?

Did you usually shop at department stores or boutiques like the GAP for clothes?

Did your school offer honors or AP classes?

Did you have a library less than 5 miles from your house?

Did your parents take you to the library?

Did your parents pay for you to have a cell phone in high school?

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

These are good additions.

Also, it needs to be labelled US Privilege Meme, but that's just wishful thinking on my part.

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

In one sense, some of your technology questions are very ageist -- I'm 32 and the internet was just a budding thing until I was already in college and beyond. Hell, cable TV wasn't available in my neighborhood until I was in my teens. Forget cell phones.

Also, some of those questions reveal an urban/rural divide -- even in the most rundown housing projects in my city, there's a library nearby (sometimes on the property itself) and cars and licenses are less a function of privilege than necessity or the lack thereof.

That said, for a certain age and beyond, these are telling questions because they address luxuries, necessities, and where that distinction is made.

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

Well, as I said, I'm updating it - for contemporary college students, since that was the group that the list was written for. Most college students are 18-25, so this list would be relevant for them. As you point out, you're no longer in college nor have been for quite a while. And even for older students and older people in general, lack of exposure to technology is still a lack of privilege. Being born later DOES give a sort of technological privilege.

And yes, there is an urban rural divide. But even in an urban area, cars are a useful luxury. The degree of luxury is just different.

[chickenfried-jo.livejournal.com]

In one sense, some of your technology questions are very ageist -- I'm 32 and the internet was just a budding thing until I was already in college and beyond. Hell, cable TV wasn't available in my neighborhood until I was in my teens. Forget cell phones.

I'm a decade older than you and this issue is even more present. We had a family tv. We had a family phone and we drove older cars. No one I knew had a computer of their own until well into the eighties and most of us until the nineties. No cell phones at all.

One caveat is I grew up in California in the sixties and seventies and some tech stuff was actively discouraged just as some ludite stuff was encouraged. Home grown everything, hand made gifts and the like. That was part of the era though I can see how that is privilege because we were able to CHOOSE not to have tech items or cars or storebought food.

I wonder about charity work as well because my family was pretty big on working in soup kitchens, helping farm workers picket grapes and such like things. I'm not sure where that falls in the privilege scale but that was a big part of our lives.

Yay, California

[orange852.livejournal.com]

I attended high school in San Mateo, CA, in the late 70's. Like you, we had a single phone (though my folks were a car proud and bought new.) I did know kids going to Hillsdale High who had their own phones in the suite that included their bedroom. Big brother was in one wing, little sister in another. Neither had their own computer, though; it was all about electric typewriters back then. That was definitely a study group to remember!

I believe I saw my first computer as a college freshman in 1984. Rich kid with the only private room in the dorm, if I recall correctly. It had an amber screen and dumped her work a lot. Meanwhile, I made $1 a page typing papers for the ag econ majors who sooo couldn't spell.

Re: Yay, California

[chickenfried-jo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I fondly remember electric typewriters. I learned on one! I also wonder how much of the privilege is gender biased.

Re: Yay, California

[orange852.livejournal.com]

I only learned on a manual because the first year I took typing in high school was the last year they had manuals. I swear it does wonders for one's eventual speed on a computer keyboard to have learned that way. After freshman year of high school, it was electrics at school until the advent of keyboards in my life, which was about the time I hit the trail to install PC-based point of sale terminals in Burger Kings in the late 80's. Nothing helps your WPM quite like wanting to get out of a fast food back room as quickly as possible. ;)

I'm a little fuzzy on the gender bias of privilege, as I'm the only child (female) of a middle class family, and never had direct experience growing up of a boy to split the resources with. I understand it happens in families with sons, though. :D

Re: Yay, California

[chickenfried-jo.livejournal.com]

Heheh, yeah.

I'm thinking that the gender bias might have more to do with what parents make available to girls vs boys, how their behaviour might change around girls vs boys and so what they teach them to expect might be different. I don't think it's necessary to have been in a family with boys to experience gender biased privilege because parents might have their own gender based expectations. I think it would take a parent really aware of gender bias and equality to make the same things available and to treat a daughter in a powerful and empowering way.

These are just my thoughts, though. I have no idea if that's something that effects privilege.

Re: Yay, California

[orange852.livejournal.com]

In that case, I am extraordinarily privileged. Not only was I the only child, but my mother had an early raising of feminist consciousness, having dropped out of college to support my father, then wound up divorced.

Here's the punchline, though: she walked into the Waco, TX, office of what would become one of the largest computer manufacturers in the US in 1959, a female college dropout, to apply for a job. They told her she was equally qualified to be a secretary or a computer systems analyst. Having already been a secretary and deemed it "boring," Mom went for the job she'd never heard of. When my father of origin graduated Baylor with a degree in accounting and (to his credit) offered to keep his end of the bargain and pay for her to finish her degree, she looked at her systems analyst paycheck and said (with all sincerity) "Why?"

The lack of degree didn't hold her back until the MBA obsession kicked off in the Fortune 500, but I digress. I am privileged above and beyond the wildest fantasies of female-kind because that woman made it her life's work to insure that never, ever would I have the slightest notion of being anything but self-supporting at the kind of job where a college degree is required to advance. If anyone was attitudinally prepared to pursue a life of privilege, it was me.

Thanks, Mom!

[sandalstrap.livejournal.com]

Off the top of my head, you'd also need to add these:

Did you have an allowance?

Did you earn money outside your home before you were 18? 16? 14? 10? And was it for personal use or family use?