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

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

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?

I don't think it's testing _for_ anything.

It's intended to make people (according to the original web page, residence hall staff at Indiana State University) more aware of the range of experiences that students might have had growing up.

I mean, just -- so I, and my husband, and a non-insignificant subset of my friends, were raised upper-middle-class (or right on the border between that and middle-middle). We might, individually, have occasionally had to worry about finances (when my husband's parents divorced, for example, and his father did not pay alimony or child support), but as a group, money was just there and accessible and if we needed stuff, we asked for it and got it. There are a lot of things on that list that I wouldn't bold -- but which, if I had ever asked for them, I would have gotten (SAT prep course or a private tutor, for example).

Those are privileges that I had that two of my very dearest friends, one raised...working-poor, I suppose, and one lower-middle-class, did not. And they have meant all kinds of different things in my life and educational experience.

I work with college students every day. And I can't just assume that all the ones who look and/or sound like me actually have the same kind of background that I do. After all, if you put me in a row with those two of my dear friends, we are all white American women in our early 30s with master's degrees. Wouldn't it be easy for a stranger to assume that we were all raised in our current apparent-social-class? That we all got to go on family vacations? That none of us had to fight tooth and nail to _be allowed to go to college_, that none of us had to go into debt to go to college? We're so alike! We have good professions and expensive degrees and good-looking professional husbands and nice houses and nice cars and we all sound just right...but we're not coming from the same place. _I started here_. They got to fight their way here.

And it is worth it, to me, to keep in mind that many of the students I work with are also making that journey -- and it is worth it to keep in mind that some of the students I work with are _not_ making that journey and might not be _aware_ of that journey because they, like me, started here...and maybe they need to be made aware of the journey, gently, from time to time.

(By the way, I do think that it's not the best-designed example of this kind of thing I've ever seen. And I think Barrett is an idiot who misuses the word "prestige" a lot. But that doesn't mean it isn't a worthwhile thing, in concept; it also doesn't mean that it isn't useful -- just that it could be better at doing what it does.)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*nods* I read the context for it; but anecdotally, at least (at fifteen years ago, I would have been sixteen), it--hmm. I don't know how to explain how *bizarre* the questions are, because the things considered here as 'privileges' were, again, anecdotally, things that weren't off baseline, and I grew up rural lower-middle with forays into upper-lower.

Again, and this is hard for me to articulate; what are mentioned as 'privilege' here are scattered even when I was sixteen in being the norm for kids in my same general socioeconomic class. The only difference I would see is the material value of the objects (cars), the phone lines (extra features), lessons (whether there were teachers available or if the teachers at school also gave lessons, sometimes for free for some groups), flying (I got a scholarship to go abroad when I was seventeen, but the program allowed for younger), prep course (school offered several), etc etc etc.

It feels like its assigning the word privilege far, far too generally for too large a group of things.

I do see what you're saying, and obviously I can't possibly approach it from your perspective, but it seems--to me--to assume a *lot* about the middle and lower classes right off the bat, and a lot of it is, again, anecdotally, utterly wrong and scattershot in approach to what constitutes a privilege.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think that any collection of items is going to be exhaustive or fully representative. They _can't_ be, because one list like this can't account for all circumstances.

Like: I flew on planes before I turned 16, but several of my siblings did not. Why? Well, they just didn't. They happened to be older. And I didn't have private tutors, but four of my siblings did.

But that's OK; it doesn't _need_ to be exhaustive or 100% accurate for 100% of the people; it's just intended to give people an idea of the different places that different people can be coming from.