quizzicalsphinx 's livejournal, this meme seems to be incredibly biased not only culturally but also in terms of the priorities that the people who wrote it assume for other people, and how they expect everyone has the same priorities they do, or that they assume that people of a certain class all act the same way. Part of the reason I'm doing this is because I know that I am from a privileged background, but I feel that my parents' priorities and my own affect the outcome of this survey more than my background. I think I'm ticking a lot less of these than they expect someone 'privileged' to bold.
From What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.
Bold what applies etc.
Father went to college
Father finished college
Mother went to college
Mother finished college
Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor This question in itself shows a tremendous bias in favor of academics as most people would not necessarily put "College Professor" on the same line as "Doctor" and "Lawyer."
Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers I think that this is another very biased question and it's one that assumes all high school kids are observant enough to make this call, or that the teachers aren't careful enough to mask their class standing in a poorer school. I was not a higher class than my teachers but definitely the same class as my teachers. This would be a better question if it just asked 'higher class' because it says more about someone who assumes teachers are of a lower class than they are regardless of whether the teachers actually are. I understand the intent of this question, but I think it fails.
Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
Had more than 500 books in your childhood home I don't know for sure, but I know we had over two hundred.
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 -- I'm a Long Islander. We have never been portrayed positively by the media.
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 - rarely, but they did once in a while. Usually they involved staying with relatives.
Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18 - All of my clothing was handmade or hand-me-down until I turned about ten. Sometimes I got new clothing as a gift from relatives.
Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them- I have never driven.
There was original art in your house when you were a child
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18 - a phone but not a phone line, installed for my 16th birthday. Which was actually my mother putting a ten-year-old rotary phone in my bedroom because she was sick of me locking people out of her bedroom to talk about boys.
You and your family lived in a single family house
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
You had your own room as a child -- I had my own room most of the time. We had a lot of different people living with us at different times throughout my childhood, and because of that, I had my own bedroom when there weren't other little girls living with us.
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 -New Orleans once, Florida twice. The New Orleans one was paid by my father's company.
Went on a cruise with your family - My father worked for a cruise ship company. I have still never been on a cruise.
Went on more than one cruise with your family
Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family - My father started showing me bills for regular household items when I was about seven and explained how much it cost to run the air conditioner, the heat, how much to buy gas for the car, and how much to leave lights on. If I left lights on or needed a ride anywhere, it came out of my allowance.
And, this will probably get me flamed beyond belief, but: I find that it's usually people who have privilege and are unwilling to admit it who are most critical of these things.
I don't think this quiz is nearly as well-done as similar ones I've seen about race, because the thing with the one you mentioned and others is that it does a fairly good job of picking up on things that white people as a whole usually assume everyone has/does/get that non-whites do not. This one is much too biased in favor of academia as a cultural ideal for it to work well even for someone very wealthy whose family doesn't put a premium on education.
Part of what I see as a problem with it is that it relies too heavily on 'education' and 'consumer goods' as a measure of privilege which is fine if it's being written for spoiled rich kids in college, but when you get out to the rest of the world, in my case, I was the child of fairly well-off hippies. So we were absolutely privileged, but a lot of the things that this list is measuring as 'privilege' do not apply to me in the least.
It's cool your parents showed you the utility bills. Mine still don't disclose numbers for their expenses. Given what their house cost, I probably don't want to know.
Edited at 2008-01-01 11:03 pm (UTC)
I laughed. A lot.
Good for your friend though! :)
Aha. I'm going to continue being happily oblivious to how stupid I just sounded, if that's cool with people? I'll maintain happiness with my intellect this way <.
It's quite strange to see that acronym used outside of the whole republicanism aspect, I have to say XD Thanks for explaining, hon! <3
I switched to a public school when we moved to Minnesota because we were living in an area that had a really good public school--which isn't something this list takes into account. There were plenty of privileged kids at my high school whose parents probably could have sent them to a private school, but why bother when area you're in has a public school with a really good reputation for academics (and sports)?
You've kind of already pointed this out, but this list really isn't taking into account differences in where people live even on the small scale of suburb versus city--or even the scale of different places in the city. Someone's family might own their own single family home, but if they're owning it in the inner city, there's going to be some considerable differences between their lifestyle and the lifestyle of someone who owns a single family home--or even someone who rents an apartment
Someone else suggested questions like "Did your family have health/dental insurance," which I think would be a way better question. Or there could be "Did you have regular physical and dental check ups?" There could also be one asking something like "Were all of your school's textbooks up-to-date and in good condition?" Questions that will focus more on things that it's generally agreed it's a good thing for everyone to have, instead of stuff like "Did you have a TV"--which, yeah, there's a lot of reasons someone might not a TV that have nothing to do with being able to afford one or not.
(I kind of wonder how these professors would react if we complied all these criticisms of their list and e-mailed it to them. This sort of thing is usually given to students as an introduction to thinking about privilege for the first time, so they're not really in the best place to critique.)
(Also, I have a ton of "Based on McIntyre's Unpacking the Knapsack" lists from when I TAed a class that had an intro to privilege component. I'm know there's one for Christianity and I'm pretty sure there's one for ablism. I'll have to dig through and see if there's one for class and if it's better than this one.)
Too much of the list is made up of things that are recognized as a privilege/luxury (cruises, TV/phone in your room, car, credit card) for it to be really helpful tool for pointing out that some people don't have access to things that are considered pretty basic requirements for living a decent life, such as, again, access to health care.
And I feel like that's really what the Invisible Knapsack exercises are for: Pointing out that class/race/sexism/whatever-ism DO still exist in American society today, effect people's lives in positive and negative ways (depending on who you are), and are a lot more subtle than Scrooge going around kicking orphans.
And now that I think about it, it does read kind of like a bunch of middle-class kids going "Man, I was always so jealous of my friend who had her own TV and phone line. She was so lucky. Let's put those on the list!"
And I think you raise a good point, although it is making us discuss it now, but mainly being critical. I think that if this is the list that is being used to start a discussion of privilege, it's propagating the attitude that these are the measures of privilege. Someone like me who is less aware of my own background in relation to other people's could take this list and say, "look, I'm not so privileged," and wouldn't get anything out of the exercise.
I definitely agree, though. A list of things like "I went to the doctor for regular checkups" and "I ate lunch that my family paid for" would be more useful.
And yeah, the people I'm worried about are the ones whose first introduction to privilege is this list--especially the students of the people who designed this, since I'm not convinced they themselves have the best grasp on the idea of class privilege.