Has Class Trumped Race? Part 1 - Understanding Privilege at Racialicious

Has Class Trumped Race? Part 1 - Understanding Privilege

by Racialicious Special Correspondent Latoya Peterson

Gossip Girl

Have you seen the Class Privilege checklist?

I had not. Apparently, this was a staff development exercise on class privilege that made it to the internet and has launched a thousand comments and counter-posts.

I originally found this through Donna Darko, who found it through Bint Alshamsa.

The instructions are simple. While in the classroom, you would take a step forward for each item that is in your experience. In the blogosphere, you simply bold the item. (I have given my answers below. Part two of this series will explore the events around many of these items, as these widely depend on circumstance and location.)

When you were in college:

If your father went to college, take a step forward.
If your father finished college
If your mother went to college
If your mother finished college
If you have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
If you were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
If you had a computer at home
If you had your own computer at home
If you had more than 50 books at home
If you had more than 500 books at home
If were read children’s books by a parent
If you ever had lessons of any kind
If you had more than two kinds of lessons
If the people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
If you had a credit card with your name on it
If you have less than $5000 in student loans
If you have no student loans
If you went to a private high school
If you went to summer camp
If you had a private tutor
If you have been to Europe
If your family vacations involved staying at hotels
If all of your clothing has been new and bought at the mall
If your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
If there was original art in your house
If you had a phone in your room
If you lived in a single family house
If your parent own their own house or apartment
If you had your own room
If you participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
If you had your own cell phone in High School
If you had your own TV in your room in High School
If you opened a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
If you have ever flown anywhere on a commercial airline
If you ever went on a cruise with your family
If your parents took you to museums and art galleries
If you were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

There has been a bit of criticism aimed toward this checklist, best summarized in this response.

But do the criticisms hold some truth?

Commenter Amy P, responding to an Atlantic Monthly blogger’s critique of the checklist, makes an interesting note:

There’s been some excellent discussion over at Scalzi’s site (although the thread is becoming eye-glazingly long), and I agree with nearly all the critiques of the privilege checklist, which seems oddly detached from the realities of both rich and poor. Here are a few alternate questions (some borrowed from Scalzi’s commentors):

1. Has anyone close to you ever overdosed on drugs?

2. Did you grow up with married parents?

3. Has anyone in your family’s social circle ever been in prison?

4. Has your family ever been foreclosed on?

5. Have your parents ever been bankrupt?

6. Was a family vehicle ever repossessed?

7. Have you seen a dentist in the past year?

8. Did your family have health insurance through an employer?

9. Did your parents use pay-day loans?

10. Did your parents ever get threatening calls from collectors?

11. Have you seen a doctor in the past year? Two years? Three years?

12. Has anyone in your immediate family ever delayed an important medical procedure because they didn’t have the money?

13. Did you ever move in with relatives because of financial problems?

14. Were you ever on reduced or free school lunch?

15. Was one or both parents often unemployed and looking for work?

16. Was your family ever evicted?

17. Did your family often argue about money? (This question will bring in a lot of upper-middle class folk, but lack of conflict over money is a form of privilege, too.)

18. Did your family have to deal with social workers?

19. Are you in ROTC to pay for college?

20. Did you serve in the military to pay for college?

21. Did you transfer from a community college?

22. Do you have a child?

23. Do you work more than 10 hours a week? 20 hours a week? 30 hours a week?

24. Were your parents able to help you with your homework?

In response to some of the more irate commenters, one of the test authors responded with this statement:

The experience is designed to highlight privilege in order to begin a discussion about class, as privilege and class are related ideas. Both privilege and class don’t have clean and commonly used definitions of what they are and are not. Instead there are multiple perspectives on privilege and class.

This is not engineering, this is not assessment, these are statements about experiences that are true for many people. If your story is not in the collection of statements, then I apologize for not including it. Your experiences of privilege and class will be different from other people’s but in general there are similarities - we tried to create statements based on the similarities.

If the statements induce feelings of guilt in you, well, that is something to think about. If they induce feelings of anger in you, well, that is something to think about. We didn’t intend guilt or anger or any particular emotional response. We did intend some kind of response that would lead to people learning something.

Is the “privilege meme” or our experience the best way to help people to an awareness of privilege and class and then to a discussion of privilege and class? I honestly don’t know. What is best for you may be different than what is best for someone else.

Will

Posted by Will Barratt | January 9, 2008 12:51 PM

There is also an interesting post called “Being Poor” by John Scalzi (apparently written in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.) At the end of a long list of scenarios, he writes:

Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.

Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.

Being poor is seeing how few options you have.

(Also of note: a discussion of absolute poverty versus relative poverty. For the purposes of this discussion, we are going to focus on ideas of relative privilege in industrialized nations.)

Having taken the exercise myself and administered it to others, I will say that the exercise is effective as it gets people talking about how privileged - or relatively unprivileged - they feel.

What are your thoughts?

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Comments

Gregory A. Butler wrote:

I happen to think those are an excellent set of questions - and a good crude index of class position.

The second test, in particular, does a good job of showing what it’s like to be poor - not going to the dentist, having people in your family circle who’ve been in jail, having relatives who delayed medical procedures because they couldn’t afford it.

I really identified with that one, cause my brother had to delay a heart transplant because he had medicaid and they wouldn’t do the transplant unless we could come up with $ 200,000 to cover the expenses.

We didn’t have the $ 200,000.

And, consequently, he died.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 8:39 am ¶
Rob Schmidt wrote:

I think I answered yes to about 20 of these items. White privilege rules!

But the list is biased by age. There were no PCs before 1980 and no cellphones before 1990. Airlines were deregulated in the 1980s. Etc.

If you want questions unbiased by age, here are some: Did you have a computer in your college dorm room or apartment? Did you have access to a mainframe or minicomputer on campus? Did you have an electric typewriter? A manual typewriter? Did you even know how to type? Or did you have to write using pen and paper? (Y’all have heard of typewriters, I trust.)

Also note the cultural shifts from 1980 to 2000. Before a certain time (1990?), almost no one took SAT prep courses. Almost no one got a credit card before their first adult job. It wasn’t a matter of not being able to afford these things. Kids were considered kids then, not miniature adults in training.

In short, this list might be good for those who were college-aged after 1990. Before then, it becomes less accurate and useful.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 9:07 am ¶
Cynthia wrote:

Some of these questions don’t necessarily apply to everyone. For example:

1. Cell Phones and computers: Cell phones weren’t exactly common, even for very privileged high school kids before say, the mid to late 90s. Computers are similar.

2. ODing on drugs: Um, sorry, drug issues aren’t exactly class-based

3. People in the media who dress/talk like me: People in the law-related professions aren’t exactly portrayed positively 100% of the time. Can we say evil lawyer or cop?

4. TV in a kid’s room: Certainly a privilege, but again, not exactly class-related. There are middle to upper income families who allow this and ones who won’t.

5. Working more than 10/20/30 hours a week: Not really class-based either. Many people take part time jobs because they are in school (or because they want to be with family), not because there can’t find a full time position.

6. Of course, many of the healthcare-related ones are very American, since other developed countries have some form of universal health care (even if such healthcare doesn’t cover EVERYTHING)

I guess this will be further examined in Part II.

Also, was this exercise meant to make people feel badly about their “privilege”?

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 9:10 am ¶
Carmen Van Kerckhove wrote:

Yeah I was telling Latoya that I’ve been at a few conferences where they used almost this exact same list to take you through an exercise about white privilege, rather than class privilege.

Personally I’m really fascinated by the responses to this — people seem to be so incredulous and resistant to the idea that they could have any form of privilege.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 9:23 am ¶
Cynthia wrote:

Hey Rob, is this really a white privilege thing? I think I answered yes to more than 20 as well, and this doesn’t include the non-dental health-related questions (I’m Canadian. Basic health care is covered by the government.)

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 9:38 am ¶
JustPlainOl'Me wrote:

I definitely get the impression, in hindsight, that I probably was an African-American child of privilege. But I never felt like I fit into such a category.

Why I was, upon review, an obviously privileged kid:
- Private school until I went to a public (Top 10) law school at UVA.
- High school was at an all boys boarding school 8 hours away from home.
- Both parents had masters degrees in education and were teachers (with an uncle as an attorney and an aunt and uncle with Ph.D.s)

Why it may appear I was privileged but these signs don’t mean much:
- I had my own room…but I was an only child. Was I supposed to stay in the bed with my mom?
- I took an SAT prep course, but it was free at my school.

Why I never felt privileged:
- Both of my parents (who divorced when I was 5) were public school teachers. That doesn’t come with a great deal of money. We weren’t struggling, but we weren’t vacationing in hotels either.
- I believe that my parents’ job status (and my departure for boarding school) kept me out of activities that would have been considered “privileged African-American” structures such as Jack & Jill (which is a concept that I still don’t quite understand.
- Going to a boarding school (almost totally on scholarship) as the child of two teachers, you do not feel privileged in the “I’m at an advantage” sense of the word (but you certainly feel privileged in the “I’m fortunate or lucky” sense. When your weel-to-do classmates take weekend ski trips or their all Tommy Hilfiger / L.L. Bean wardrobes, you definitely don’t feel privileged. Don’t even get me started on how they explained their love of black people by describing their relationship with their maid / nanny.

Quite a complex discussion of “privilege” from coming from my perspectives.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 9:45 am ¶
JustPlainOl'Me wrote:

UGH…sorry for all those typos.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 9:59 am ¶
G.D. wrote:

Hmmm.

I know black folks who grew up in two-parent homes where both parents had college degrees. There was a reasonable expectation that they would go onto college, but they grew up in the hood near us kids from single-parent families and whose mothers or aunties or guardians were on and off welfare. So they identified as poor, even if they could probably be more accurately described as tenuously middle class. (Though being tenuously middle class comes with its own anxieties, as I’m learning now.) There’s a funky conflation there, and it’s a really complicated one: issues of authenticity, identity, etc.

One of my close friends grew up pretty poor and is the only person in her family to have gone on to college; she’s working on her Ph.D. now. Up until recently, she still openly identified as poor, until one of the other students in her cohort said to her that Ph.D. candidates are NOT poor; she wields a modicum of class privilege and has access to all kinds of social networks and resources. She mulled it over and agreed.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 10:09 am ¶
atlasien wrote:

My family took a very erratic trajectory through life. We had almost no material possessions and no housing from age 0-6, a privileged middle-class existence ages 6-15, then a sharp dive downwards after a business loss that meant I had to support myself through college.

Overall, though, my immediate family definitely had middle-class privilege. I know that other members of my family (on several completely different sides) grew up in dire poverty and experienced true desperation, hunger and even malnutrition. I’m not going to pretend my temporary hardships were close to what they went through. I had a lot more choices than they did.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 10:09 am ¶
Wendi Muse wrote:

i don’t deny the privilege that i do have
however, in checking out the quiz, some of my answers (i.e. my taking an SAT/ACT prep course in HS) are a reflection of simple luck. i grew up in a single parent household, as my father died when i was a baby, and my mother is a social worker, so it’s not as if she was exactly rolling in dough. a lot of the check marks i entered on this list were a result of my mother taking the good advice of others and enrolling me in private school. given, my private school experience was a possibility only by way of scholarship (as was my college experience), so in that sense, my “privilege” was earned and owed by way of merit and need.

i guess that’s one of my criticisms of the chart. as pointed out by the critique on the other site you linked here, it’s not the *best* way to assess privilege, esp as (i think one of the commenters noted this) the democratization of more upper class goods occurs (i.e. technology, travel, etc being more accessible and less expensive).

and at the end of the month, my paycheck looks nice, but the bulk of it goes to bills–some that have resulted by choice and others that resulted out of necessity (i.e. utlities lol), but i think that having all those material goods does not ensure privilege, at least not in the sense that we think of it. because, to be honest, we’re all privileged in ways we don’t recognize until we sit down and assess what we have and for what we should be thankful. i think about the privilege i have almost on a daily basis because i recognize how soon it could all disappear.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 10:10 am ¶
G.D. wrote:

JustPlainOl’Me:

Our responses kinda piggyback each other. But yeah, being a POC and not ballin’ =/= poor.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 10:12 am ¶
Kandoodle wrote:

I like this. I’m just wondering if we can dig into some of the visceral reactions that people have when denying their privilege and why it may be. Part of the post delved into guilt and anger. I’m wondering why there’s a big culture of class denial. And seeing that race can intersect with class, I’m wondering if the reactions are connected.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 10:20 am ¶
Aaminah wrote:

Since I am too lazy to repeat myself, I will simply include a link to a friend’s blog that brought this to my attention a while ago. Obviously, my feelings about it are in the comments there.

http://www.maryams.net/dervish/2008/01/05/australian-middle-class-privilege/

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 10:31 am ¶
justin wrote:

So conceit trumps class, right? I think that is the proper conclusion.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 10:40 am ¶
Neil wrote:

i saw this privilege exercise about a week ago, and i immediately sent it to all my friends. i honestly feel like it’s an excellent starting point for discussion.
regarding the fact that some people say that this list didn’t include anything pertaining to their lives; i think that could end up as a good thing. since this test isn’t a mean to reach conclusions, but to spur dialogue and exposition, if someone feels excluded from the list, it becomes part of the discussion.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 10:43 am ¶
atlasien wrote:

I don’t agree with the proposition that we’re all simply products of our environment, but in America the opposite extreme is gospel. Class denial is so huge in America because we’re all supposed to be self-made people who overcome our environment.

Realizing you haven’t overcome your environment — because your environment really wasn’t all that difficult to overcome — can be a massive blow to the ego.

Then, people search for some way to react against that blow and shore their ego back up. If they can’t cast themselves as individuals who overcame their environment, at least they can cast their parents as heroic individuals who overcame their environment. Hence the trend that the post “Privilege goes viral” noted:

“On the other hand, many of these writers simply assume — and often viciously assert — that they and their families are “better” than people who did not grow up with the sorts of things on the list, because any parents who worked hard and cared about their kids would obviously provide the same things that they, themselves, enjoyed as children.”

I think the list is a good starting point but it isn’t really geared to handle the intersection of race and class. Almost any person of color, no matter what their class level, is going to stumble over the item “If the people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively”.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 10:46 am ¶
lunanoire wrote:

I once went to a camp where we high schoolers participated in a similar exercise. One former classmate said she didn’t think her family was rich b/c they didn’t live in a large house (though it is in the beach community of Santa Monica and she had a sibling and her own room) and she did not have a luxury car (she drove a Jeep). Some people think that if they’re not living like a celebrity, they’re not rich/wealthy.
Also, relating to experiences of people you know, as a tenuously middle class Af-Am (child of married & living w/o much $ security intellectuals) I have a sneaking suspicion that many middle class African Americans, if they know enough family members, will have a range- from the corner drug dealer, at least one relative in jail/prison to the legit prescription writer and everything inbetween. I grew more aware of my privilige after college and I thought back to my still-married parents, their ability to find free or cheap cultural events and classes and feeling comfortable while there, their focus on education, how they sheilded us from suffering heavily during a job loss, and focus on good health and extracurricular activities. OTOH as a female, I grew up sharing a room w/ my younger brother in a rental and did not buy my first car (in L.A.) until 22. The US needs to wake up w/ its class (& race) consciousness. Our neighborhoods and private lives are often segregated, so it is easy to forget that not everyone lives as we do.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 10:52 am ¶
Cynthia wrote:

Alasien,

It would depend on what kind of media you’re talking about and how you define “positive.” My family had a Chinese language premium cable channel that was Canadian run (though much of the programming would have been from Hong Kong or sometimes, Taiwan) It’s not like you’re going to see only nerdy Asians on these shows. You’ll see Asians (well, Hong Kongers and Taiwanese) of all sorts, nerdy, normal and in between. As for stereotypes, the Asian female archetypes of the submissive flower/geisha/etc and dragon lady aren’t too different from that of a southern belle (a magnolia like Gone with the Wind’s Melanie Wilkes vs feisty like Scarlett)

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 11:03 am ¶
Tara wrote:

I’m a senior in high school. Recently in some of my classes, discussions on class and privilege have been the norm, and I’m one of the glaring targets in the room, with my family’s finances being called into question on a near-daily basis. (You don’t live in a huge house, but you have a cleaning lady and your mother is a professor…are you rich? blah blah blah) I’m unsure on how to take this and I really don’t know what to tell them.

While I don’t outright attempt to deny I have some privilege, I can certainly relate. While you don’t want to appear condescending by trying to say that you’re on the same level as all of your peers, it can sometimes be extremely hard not to attempt to undermine your own privilege to avoid discomfort in said discussions.

Whenever this issue comes up around me, it breeds awkwardness and tension - but at the same time, that may be a large part of the problem.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 11:15 am ¶
Paul wrote:

This list is very classist. Material poverty does not equal intellectual poverty. For instance:

I grew up in a mobile home with both parents working at least one job. I thought breakfast-for-dinner, PB&J, and Spam were excellent food choices. We never had a car within 10 years of the new models and my mom made my clothes.

Also, we always had plenty of books in the house. My parents took me to concerts, museums, and living history centers. I was only allowed to watch PBS until the age of 8.

It just really bothers me that upper middle class and above folks assume all working class people are unintelligent and not curious about the world around them.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 11:46 am ¶
Colin wrote:

I’m going to post the original list and then take out those that have NEVER applied to me so that only those privileges that do are left.

Here’s the list below:

If your father went to college

If your mother went to college

If you have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.

If you had a computer at home
If you had your own computer at home
If you had more than 50 books at home

If were read children’s books by a parent
If you ever had lessons of any kind
If you had more than two kinds of lessons

If you had a credit card with your name on it

If you went to summer camp

If your family vacations involved staying at hotels

If there was original art in your house
If you had a phone in your room

If your parent own their own house or apartment
If you had your own room
If you participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
If you had your own cell phone in High School
If you had your own TV in your room in High School

If you have ever flown anywhere on a commercial airline

If your parents took you to museums and art galleries
If you were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

———————————-
Not bad, eh? For a middle-income family, I’ll take it indeed. I don’t think this sort of privilege is something that I would want to take away from anyone, but try to give to others, except I think I do want to know how much heating costs my parents now.

I’m a Millenial to be clear, so does that change things? I’m not sure, my family does live in a middle-class black neighborhood and the parents ARE doing alright financially…(I’m still looking for, ahem, employment) they can afford cable, internet, family phones, and a family reunion cruise coming up next month, so I can accept that I am privileged.

The thing I see about privilege that I didn’t before was that I don’t want to lose the things in that checklist, except the last one. So the way to eradicate the privilege for me would have to involve expanding access to resources like PCs and tutors and people reading to children at an early age. That involves prep courses for standardized testing, which I hate, and access and opportunities to attend college based on an admissions system interested in negating the class and gender and racial biases of most American institutions of higher learning. That’s more likely to win my support at least.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 11:47 am ¶
Colin wrote:

Paul,

I do not think the list is meant to EQUATE class difference with difference in intellectual curiosity.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 12:05 pm ¶
atlasien wrote:

Cynthia, I have to disagree with you on both points. That Chinese-language programming showed positive images of Asians in Asian countries… not Asian-Americans. And the Southern Belle stereotype is nowhere near as vicious or derogatory as the one that paints young Asian woman as pathetically passive prostitutes existing solely for the pleasure of the white man.

I’m glad that Asian-Americans today get slightly more positive representation in the media. But when I was growing up in the eighties, it was absolutely horrible.

I still think very few people of color can really answer yes to that particular list item, no matter what their class. One exception is if they can restrict themselves to non-mainstream media. This takes a fair amount of effort and can get expensive.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 12:33 pm ¶
j wrote:

I think the list mostly makes the point that class is complex and cannot be reduced to a list. Like others have noted, the list doesn’t note some important cultural shifts between the 80s, 90s and today - like that I never had a computer in school, but practically no one did in ‘88. Or there is even a bit of class assumption in the quiz - an assumption that the quiz taker has even gone to college or with questions like the one on foreclosure: no one is my family has ever been foreclosed on…. because no one owns their own house. I’ve been to a few conferences where this exercise was done based on race privilege and the outcome was usually the same - those with relative privilege were either aghast or in denial, and the rest of us weren’t really surprised.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 12:48 pm ¶
Gregory A. Butler wrote:

I’ll take the privilige test (and, just to note, I’m only puttin in the privliges I had - deleting all the rest)

When you were in college [and, just to note, I dropped out of City College of New York after only 1 year - the rest of my higher education was at a union-run vocational school, the NYC District Council of Carpenters Labor Technical College, where I was trained to be a carpenter]:

If your father went to college, take a step forward.
If you had more than 50 books at home
If you had more than 500 books at home
If were read children’s books by a parent
If you have less than $5000 in student loans
If you have no student loans (City College was only $ 640/semester when I went in 1986 - the Carpenters college was and is tuition free for carpenter apprentices)
If there was original art in your house (my dad was an artist, so there was original art that he painted)
If you had your own room
If your parents took you to museums and art galleries

[a pretty short list for me]

On the other test (again, with the answers based on the reality at the time I was in school):

1. Has anyone close to you ever overdosed on drugs? Yes

2. Did you grow up with married parents? Yes

3. Has anyone in your family’s social circle ever been in prison? Yes

4. Has your family ever been foreclosed on? Yes

5. Have your parents ever been bankrupt? Yes

6. Was a family vehicle ever repossessed? Yes and No (dad abandoned the cars before they could get repoed)

7. Have you seen a dentist in the past year? No

8. Did your family have health insurance through an employer? Yes

9. Did your parents use pay-day loans? No (but my dad did occasionally go to loansharks)

10. Did your parents ever get threatening calls from collectors? Yes

11. Have you seen a doctor in the past year? No Two years? Yes Three years? Yes

12. Has anyone in your immediate family ever delayed an important medical procedure because they didn’t have the money? Yes

13. Did you ever move in with relatives because of financial problems? No

14. Were you ever on reduced or free school lunch? No

15. Was one or both parents often unemployed and looking for work? Yes

16. Was your family ever evicted? No

17. Did your family often argue about money? Yes (Every week, when my dad got paid)

18. Did your family have to deal with social workers? Yes

19. Are you in ROTC to pay for college? No

20. Did you serve in the military to pay for college? No

21. Did you transfer from a community college? No

22. Do you have a child? No

23. Do you work more than 10 hours a week? Yes 20 hours a week? Yes 30 hours a week? Yes

24. Were your parents able to help you with your homework? Yes

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 12:50 pm ¶
gatamala wrote:

The comments/questions that these lists provoke are more valuable than the list themselves.

I had a friend who used to steal books from book fairs as a kid, b/c her folks couldn’t or wouldn’t buy them. Sure it was “stealing” but was it really wrong? She graduated and was eligible for PBK, but didn’t have the $$ for the membership fee. If I had known, I would have given it to her…but would she have taken it?

atlasien - excellent points ~ Almost any person of color, no matter what their class level, is going to stumble over the item “If the people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively”.

Yep!

If they can’t cast themselves as individuals who overcame their environment, at least they can cast their parents as heroic individuals who overcame their environment.

The meritocracy, bootstraps fairytale is a deeply-ingrained (yeoman farmer) pernicious aspect of American culture (& this is coming from a privileged person who has unabashedly availed herself of any benefit). Add these to guilt and you have denial!

Paul~

You are right.

IMHO you have the privilege (and benefit) of parents who poured their resources (financial, time and otherwise) into what is truly important and the experience to know what struggle is. Those experiences are very powerful and you will probably succeed where folks w/ more material comforts will fail.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 1:04 pm ¶
gatamala wrote:

okay, I read some of those defensive comments on the links…

I think people equate the word privilege with 18th century British royalty [*cue harpsichord*] replete with powdered periwigs and footmen.

To wit, “I am not George III, so I am not privileged”.

I stand by my yeoman farmer comment.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 1:12 pm ¶
Cynthia wrote:

Atlasien,

Do you mean the portrayal of Asians in fiction, as in soaps, dramas and sitcoms? Because the Chinese language channel definitely had locally-produced cooking shows, news programs and talk shows. As for the POC (a term I hate. What’s wrong with “non-white”? POC makes non-whites seem poor) really being able to answer the question: Maybe I’m odd, but I don’t look at race first. When someone says “a person who dresses and talks like me” I don’t think that the person has to be of my ethnic background. At all. The person I see is sometimes Asian, sometimes black, sometimes white, sometimes Native, sometimes Hispanic. The only thing I have in common with this person is that she is female. However, if it had said “a person who dresses, talks AND LOOKS like me” then I would have said something else.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 1:19 pm ¶
Thea wrote:

My one criticism of this list is that it’s very American-centric. It would be interesting to see a list that tried to measure class across Western countries. As Cynthia noted it doesn’t really work if you live in Canada. I grew up in Singapore and a lot of the questions don’t really work from my experience.

Despite that, the list has confirmed for me that I’m pretty middle-class, which I do know but am always trying to temper - by saying things like, “yah, but when I was little my parents didn’t have money,” or “maybe we had money but it was because my parents were always borrowing”…

What I like most about this list is that it offers me the chance to analyse my knee-jerk response: to dismiss my own privilege or feel embarrassed about it.

I’m surrounded by white folks who do the same thing with reference to their white privilege, and seeing how I also try and play down my privilege when I’m in their position (ie the position of the un-oppressed) gives me a lot of insight into how and why we deny just how unequal our world is.

I think recognising your own class privilege when you’re a person of colour is tricky in a different way - as if coming from families of material privilege makes our immigrant/of colour experience somehow less authentic. It’s totally ridiculous that we need to downplay the things about our life that were easy, in order to feel like we have total membership in a marginalised group. Totally ridiculous but also something I totally do.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 1:38 pm ¶
Paul wrote:

Colin,
The list may not have MEANT to equate intelligence with class, but it did so nonetheless. Going back to the 19th Century, the newly-minted middle class has sought ways to distance itself from the working class. The easiest way to do this is to pretend poorer people intellectually and culturally inferior. This lists reinforces that assumption by equating material wealth with education and intelligence.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 2:03 pm ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:

Some notes:

1. Go with your first reaction. The next piece will give you a chance to interpret privilege, in a sense.

2. Cynthia, we are talking IN GENERAL. I could argue the same thing about TV One here, but in reality, that is one channel against a slew of invisibility or stereotypes.

3. I agree with Atlasien’s comments.

4. Paul is right, I see the same thing. Colin, the list was not meant to equate those two things, but I have noticed the word “poor” has come to mean a host of things including “stupid” and “ghetto” - it depends on who is using the word. Kind of like “uneducated.” When I left my last job for my current job, they asked me to help redraft the job description. They asked for a BA, which I felt was grossly over qualifying the position, especially for the amount of pay offered. I asked why and they said they wanted a certain “education level.” I pointed out that I did the job perfectly well, I was leaving because there was no room for advancement, and what did they want to offer a person with this kind of education? My boss backpedaled and said she considered me educated; she just wanted to keep the riff-raff out. Yes, riff-raff.

Words have a definition - and then they have a meaning.

I am also wondering why some people react with embarrassment when we discuss things like privilege.

Are you assuming that people who have less privilege resent you for having more privilege? I’ll discuss that more in PT 2, but feel free to voice your thoughts.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 2:15 pm ¶
Mireille wrote:

DAMN I’m privileged.

However, I do resent the Community College question. Though many people go to CC because of financial reasons, there arealso those who need to grow up (like me), working professionals, and international students (many of whom are significantly more wealthy than the majority of their home country) looking to transfer. My education has not been second rate because I’ve only paid $1500 a semester.

As for my priviliage… I have my own apartment (without roommates) now outside of DC with utilities including internet and groceries…All paid for by my parents. My lack of car is due to my environmentalism and not my parent’s inability to provide me with one. My environmentally conscious lifestyle is a huge marker of my privilege. I have access to recycling facilities, I can afford earth friendly products like household cleaners and light bulbs, I can buy local and/or organic and have the leisure time to prepare my food well. I can afford these things, and I have been privileged enough to be educated as to why they are important. I also got my first job through connections my mother had.
I have absorbed the idea that ‘upper-middle class is always right’–that I should have a healthy disdain for those more privileged than me who were wasteful and irresponsible than their money (Paris Hilton types) but also that the values and concerns of my class, as well as the things I take for granted such safety from violence, financial security and health care, are paramount.

I am always struck by the fact that the things that make me understand my own privilege–access to the internet, my education, my interaction with other intellectually curious people during our leisure time–are themselves a mark of privilege.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 2:25 pm ¶
Faith wrote:

I grew up extremely underprivileged. I am the daughter of a teen welfare mom and we were frequently homeless. Only four items on the list applied to me:
If you had more than 50 books at home
If you ever had lessons of any kind
If you had more than two kinds of lessons
If you have ever flown anywhere on a commercial airline
My ballet and piano lessons were had by scholarship, with help from relatives to pay for supplies, but they were advantages none the less. Right now I live comfortably as an actuary, but it was really hard to claw my way up. I am saddled with a ton of college loans while I struggle to help my little brother through college. Anyone who thinks there is scholarship money aplenty for poor, high achieving minority students should think again.
I really resent all those people who try to deny that their privileges meant little, to argue that they had they same childhood as me, just in a better neighborhood. It diminishes all the hard work I put into fighting off these disadvantages. I overcame a lot. Being poor is not like being middle-class with less money. It is scary and I hope I never have to go through that again.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 3:14 pm ¶
Josh wrote:

I have no problem with the idea of the list, but I think a lot of its items are awfully arbitrary. Why does it count as privilege to have a parent who’s an attorney, physician, or professor but not a parent who’s, say, a corporate executive? Why does overseas travel only count as privilege if it’s to Europe?

For me, it’s something of a mixed bag. I had a lot of privilege in some ways - I always went to good schools, always had exposure to books and the arts and such, travelled, and both my parents became professors around the time I became a teenager. But earlier in my childhood, we had no money at all. Both my parents went to school and worked full time, we lived in tiny apartments, got free government cheese on occasion, and I was teased a great deal for being poor (although that only started after we started to have more money - go figure). By the time I got to high school and college, my parents were making quite a bit of money, which also made circumstances really different for my sister (six years younger) than they had been for me. She pretty consistently got more than I did at the same age and has a fraction the student loan debt I do, although our college educations cost about the same amount. And, in my very biased opinion, she also appreciated it a lot less. How do you quantify all that? I don’t know.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 4:00 pm ¶
johnjihoonchang wrote:

What’s funny is that I assumed I was more privileged than the assessment provided (14-points). I’m well aware that my parents sacrificed a lot to position me well in life. Also, my family’s class shifted from lower to upper-middle over the course of my youth, so that might have had an impact on my own perception. Overall, in reflecting on this, I’ve come to realize that I was quite privileged, but that privilege came at a cost to my parents and furthermore, I grew up in an environment that might have been meritocratic (immigrant-optimist-idealist), I had to pick up (and still have yet to pick up) on a lot of aspects of middle class understanding that my parents did not not impart, having come from rural middle-class Corea, which along the larger spectrum of Corean society, would classify as upper-lower class.

I don’t know how much that makes sense, but I think that being of an immigrant background makes the whole issue a little more complex, since even class is defined differently in different societies. Consequently, the mentalities that transfer over doesn’t necessarily equate to the same experiences of privilege–the markers might be different, but I certainly don’t doubt the actual privilege itself.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 4:07 pm ¶
gloria wrote:

Wow, those people bitching because the survey made them confront their privilege? They need a reality check. I hope I sound humble, being someone who most of those things above indicating presence of privilege apply to except for the ridiculous ones (original art, tv in room, etc. - what the hell would I even want with a tv in my room) but seriously, if you’ve ever lived in the real world you know people who shared bedrooms with family, or O.D.’d, or helped out with the bills as a kid, or couldn’t afford massive luxury appliances like computers and shit. And it pisses me off that there are people out there who can’t figure out what the difference between five hundred books in a household and fifty books in a household means for children.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 4:10 pm ¶
Cynthia wrote:

I’d guess Europe because it has a higher concentration of developed countries and what many perceive to be “culture.” Europe in this case probably also means western Europe. Countries that made up the former Soviet Union probably don’t count either.

If you were to include Asia, Japan and perhaps Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan would be the only ones listed. China and India have “culture” but they aren’t “developed.”

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 4:21 pm ¶
Phrone wrote:

You know, until a few weeks ago, I would have been one of the people protesting, “But I’m not priveleged! I didn’t have ___! I didn’t have ___!”

But then my friend’s mother lost her job, couldn’t find a new one and got denied retirement/benefits/etc. And when I saw how much that devastated the entire family (the father was retired so he didn’t have a job either), I had to sit back and say “…Yes, I am priveleged.” It was not a pleasant experience.

I don’t think anyone wants to admit they’re priveleged, although I think a lot of people are on at least one level. (Such as class, but also race, gender, sexual identity, disability status, etc.)

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 4:30 pm ¶
Juan Stoppable wrote:

Rob Schmidt wrote:
In short, this list might be good for those who were college-aged after 1990. Before then, it becomes less accurate and useful.

I’m attending a public university right now and come from a working class town, and half the list seems out of date. I’d say it applies to people in college from 94-01.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 5:17 pm ¶
jd wrote:

huh, interesting seeing the people (here and on other blogs) freaking out about being called privileged. I checked off almost every item on that first list, but, because my mother “married up” into a white collar family while most of her sisters didn’t, if you extend the field to aunts and cousins, I check off just about everything on the second list too. Which means, I guess, that I was privileged and knew it.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 5:55 pm ¶
Claire wrote:

As Latoya pointed out at the outset of her post, this list was prepared for use in a specific time and place. I’d guess that the authors would agree wholeheartedly that it doesn’t comprehensively define relative class privilege. It is, however, a good conversation-starter, which is what memes should be.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 7:19 pm ¶
queerhapa wrote:

Great discussion, folks!

While the list is for sure an imperfect assessment, I disagree with the argument that it equates intelligence with class privilege. I *do* think it equates EDUCATION with class privilege, which is, I think, one of the points the creators of the list are trying to make. Class privilege is not just about money and property, but about cultural resources and status. Sociologists call these distinctions economic capital (material resources), cultural capital (cultural knowledge, including education), and social capital (people resources, networking, “connections”). You can have a lot of one type and not a lot of another, and one type may be more helpful in some situations than others, but they are all aspects of one’s class status. Like, as a PhD student I am flat broke and earning poverty wages, but I have a hell of a lot of privilege in terms of cultural and social capital. (And can check off over 20 items on that imperfect age-biased white American-centric first list).

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 7:47 pm ¶
Torontonian wrote:

Also, was this exercise meant to make people feel badly about their “privilege”?

Grrr. I don’t know why Cynthia, but your comments tend to drive me up the wall.

No, this exercise was not meant to make people “feel badly” about their privilege. The exercise was meant to make people recognize their privilege.

I know I am privileged. I’ve known it for a while, maybe because I went to public school and I realized that I am much more privileged than the vast majority of people I knew.

So what follows from recognizing one’s privilege? Ideally, you should change your world view and learn a little bit more about what things you take for granted. If you previously believed that poor people are poor because they are lazy instead of because of circumstances, you should reevaluate that belief. If you previously thought that you got the grades that you got in university because you are more hard-working and/or innately smarter than others, you should reevaluate that belief. If you previously thought that all your fellow undergrads had the option of purchasing Tim Horton’s coffee at Sid Smith before class to keep themselves awake and attentive, you should reconsider.

Personally, I believe that the vast majority of people need to rethink their concept of ’self’. If you think that you are not a product of your environment and your ancestry, you need a reality check.

As for the POC (a term I hate. What’s wrong with “non-white”? POC makes non-whites seem poor)

Interesting. Why do you think “POC” makes non-whites seem poor? It means the same thing to me. POCs are non-white people, people who lack white privilege.

When someone says “a person who dresses and talks like me” I don’t think that the person has to be of my ethnic background. At all.

It might be different for HK Chinese FOBs who have accents and dress like FOBs.

Also, you don’t think of ethnicity when someone mentions a person who dresses and talks like you, because you probably dress “white” and talk “white”. When I say that you dress “white”, I mean you probably don’t wear Fubu or Baby Phat (although people who wear that have class privilege). When I say that you talk “white”, I mean you probably talk like people who went to private school, instead having a GTA accent like Russell Peters (although he may have had class privilege).

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 8:02 pm ¶
Torontonian wrote:

Ugh, also everyone, with respect to having TVs in your room and travelling to Europe specifically, the items on the quiz test if you do have that specific privilege, not if you lack that specific privilege. If you have a TV in your room, you are privileged in that sense, but if you don’t have a TV in your room, it doesn’t say anything. That is, having a TV in your room is a sufficient test for that type of privilege, but having a TV in your room is not a necessary test for that type of privilege. In other words:

If (TV in your room) then (you have that privilege) = true

If (you have that privilege) then (TV in your room) = false

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 8:19 pm ¶
Cynthia C wrote:

queerhapa,

How is the first list WHITE-american centric? I don’t see anything on the list that is distinctly a white thing, especially if you look at it from an international POV. The SAT/ACT prep course may be more American-leaning, but many international kids go to US schools and will likely take prep courses in their own country. And IRA can easily be replaced by an organization from your own country.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 8:34 pm ¶
Cynthia C wrote:

Torontonian:

1. “POC” seems more negative and “other” than “non-white”

2. What does “dressing like a FOB” mean, exactly? More than 60% of ones wardrobe is from a mall like Pacific Mall?

I’m not too sure about my “accent”, but some guy I was once set up with thought I sounded a little British. Still don’t know where he got that from. I tend to think I sound typically Torontonian.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 8:48 pm ¶
Torontonian wrote:

I was half-joking about the FOB thing. I think it was more distinctive in the 90s, but now mainstream clothes seems to be influenced by Pacific Mall trends. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Now new Chinese immigrants are coming from mainland China, and mainland Chinese dress more “normal” (i.e., plain).

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 9:18 pm ¶
donna darko wrote:

Class: The third rail of personal and political discussions.

It’s taboo because it’s so important. Talking about economic inequalities is potentially explosive.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 10:17 pm ¶
al wrote:

i think it’s really strange how people with class privileges want to or feel compelled to deny it. “we had a computer, but that doesn’t mean we were rich rich!” (made up example). really, since when did growing up poor become the new cool thing? not that growing up poor is something shameful (or being a poor adult for that matter), but why is poverty ‘hip’?

i mean, i understand denying that being class privileged isn’t unfair (i don’t agree with that) but this whole denial thing is very strange. is it an appropriation thing?

all i know is, i didn’t need this list to know i’m privileged.

Posted 05 Feb 2008 at 10:55 pm ¶
angryyoungwoman wrote:

I won’t deny that I had a priveleged childhood and adolescence and these sets of questions reflect that. What they don’t reflect is the current state of affairs. Even though I grew up in a middle class home where I never went hungry or without medical care, when I was a senior in high school I became disabled. By age 21 I was no longer able to work and I’ve had to depend on Social Security Disability income. Every week I find out Medicare is turning down another prescription or medical procedure. Yes, I once lived a very priveleged life. I don’t feel so priveleged anymore.

Posted 06 Feb 2008 at 4:36 am ¶
Will Barratt wrote:

What a wonderful discussion. To answer some of the observations - this list was designed to be used with US college students and recent graduates, so it is US and generation biased.
This list was not designed to make people angry, but we are aware that anger is a classic reaction in the denial of diversity (see Milton Bennett on diversity). This list was not designed to be biased toward intelligent, money, or anything. It is a simple collection of things that are often listed as privilege in the research literature. Privilege is associated with class, and class is complicated, including social capital, cultural capital, and economic capital (Pierre Bourdieu) as well as academic capital for the campus crowd.

I am heartened by the constructive dialog here. Awareness is the first step on the path to learning.

http://wbarratt.indstate.edu/socialclass/social_class_on_campus.htm for the originals.

Has class trumped race? Class is hugely important. Class and gender and ethnicity are intertwined in important ways. There are not simple answers here.

Will Barratt (one of the authors of the list)

Posted 06 Feb 2008 at 8:25 am ¶
Reginald wrote:

If anyone knows anything about Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, he once said that “the problem of the twentieth century was the problem of the color line”; I personally believe that in the twenty-first century, the problem is the class line.

Not to say that race isn’t important, because it clearly is, but when you examine the way things are going now, class is always thrown into the equation. That’s what I think people are not understanding. It’s not ALWAYS racism. Capitalism has had a tremendous detrimental effect on the triangular relationship between race, class, and gender. One has to wonder if there was no capitalism, would there not be the problems there are now? It’s food for thought, but something that must be “digested throughly”

http://www.onthewritersblock.blogspot.com/

Posted 06 Feb 2008 at 12:16 pm ¶
CMEdwards wrote:

As soon as I saw this I had to write.

I received my bachelor’s in English from the University of New Hampshire as one of 60 students of color on a campus of 12,000 students at graduation.

As a freshman I took a simple sociology class which focused on class, race and ethnicity. As the sole black (or for that matter any minority) in the class of 50 students I had regularly debates in class but nothing prepared me for what I think my graduate student teacher decided to do.

One day in class we were all told to stand at the back of the room. If you know the game and you’ve seen the questions, you can bet while there were a number of students who ended up at the front or middle of the room, I alone was standing in the back of the room at the end of the excercise.

Long story short, the teacher thought we should all sit and talk about race and class after the excercise. I was seething and beyond the point of pissed off. Then several students told me how “guilty” they felt to be white and middle class (I am too - I mean, middle class) and how “sorry” they felt for me.

While I think the excercise is inherently good, the idea that any teacher would do this to their students without fair warning or real exploration of the subject matter sickened me. And yes, I’m sure she teaches high school now. How appropriate.

Posted 06 Feb 2008 at 1:50 pm ¶
Cynthia wrote:

CMEdwards,

I did a similar exercise in drama class (out of all places!) when I was an undergrad. The facilitator had us all assemble in one side of the room and she’d ask us a bunch of questions, such as “How many of you in this room identify as female?” At that time, all the girls would go to the other side of the room. We’d then go back to where we were and she’d ask another question. Some questions were obvious while others weren’t (e.g. how many identify as LGBTQ (I think I’m missing a few letters)? or How many are not Christian?) I’m used to being the token non-white in drama class, but it was weird when she actually pointed it out.

Posted 06 Feb 2008 at 2:40 pm ¶
Iaypo wrote:

I’m delurking to post on this because I find this exercise very interesting. On the whole I think it is pretty useful but I have a couple critiques of it:

I don’t think this list takes into account is how sometimes lowerclass/poor people will own one or two nice or expensive things even though they are quite poor. For example, my parents bought a computer when I was 14, but our power and phone were still cut off sometimes because we couldn’t pay the bills for them. In short class and poverty are complex issues that no list can completely take apart.

Posted 06 Feb 2008 at 2:51 pm ¶
joanna wrote:

This reminds me of the Heterosexual Questionnaire.
http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/lessonplans/heterosexual2.htm

Posted 06 Feb 2008 at 7:35 pm ¶
jen* wrote:

I went through the list a while back, and was not surprised to find that I was indeed privileged, growing up. I forget who mentioned it, but I do believe part of the reason POC* might get defensive about acknowledging privilege is the relationship to authenticity.

There is a real sense in some communities that those who have reached a level of privilege have left behind some of their identity as well. From the opposite direction, there is the feeling from members of the majority that privileged minorities have received their ‘40 acres and a mule’ and should sit back and be content [ie. no longer struggle against other racial inequities.] It’s a tough middle ground to walk, and I find myself smack-dab in that situation.

Work is a classic example - being the only black professional chemist at my company I struggle with the ’she’s white-enough’ attitude from my coworkers as I try to maintain being ‘black-enough’ with the black people I encounter throughout the plant. I couldn’t begin to define what either of those terms mean in real words - but the feeling is palpable and most certainly present.

Further, I shudder to think that race may be leaving the discussion of privilege - in favor of class/economics. Percentages of POC with less privilege still outnumber those of the majority [not that this is necessarily a contest]. My fear, though, is that continued pursuit of changing the semantics of the argument will have the net effect of fulfilling Ward Connerly’s dream of an Affirmative Action-Free America. Or perhaps more insidiously, it will no longer have any race-basis and will be purely class driven. I have no illusions about how quickly things would change back to a more palatable status-quo: neatly white-washed.

It is lovely to think that we’ve transcended the need for including race in the class/privilege discussion but doesn’t that belie the very point of this site?

*a term I prefer to ‘non-white’ for several reasons - 1 being it does not depend on whiteness for it’s definition or specifically term one group of people in default relation to another

Posted 06 Feb 2008 at 9:04 pm ¶
jen* wrote:

ps- interesting denial of privilege:
http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2008/02/05/billionaire-schwarzman-im-not-wealthy/

Posted 06 Feb 2008 at 9:08 pm ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:

Jen* -

Surely you know me a bit better than that. A question like “Has Race Trumped Class” sets up an argument - it doesn’t stand in for one.

But no worries - race will be reintroduced in part 3. I just want to make sure we’ve got the class thing down before we start exploring how these two things intersect.

Posted 06 Feb 2008 at 9:45 pm ¶
jen* wrote:

Latoya ~ I suppose I was more responding to some of the comments that seemed ripe for the new assignation of class instead of race when it comes to socio-political issues.

This has been a hot-button topic here, and I just find it interesting how insidious some posistions/arguments can be - especially when they’re made in the name of “hope” or “transcendance” or progressive-ness. It is my hope that we continue to see the forest AND the trees.

Posted 06 Feb 2008 at 11:04 pm ¶
Flo wrote:

this is sometimes called a power/privilege walk. I have participated in this activity (with both these questions and others) on several occasions, mostly as a part of anti-racism / anti-oppression trainings, but I have seen them used in other contexts with great sucess. they are generally somewhat eye opening for the more privileged among the group however this can be at the expense of some of the people with less privilege, putting those already with a disadvantage futher into that catagory, generally people who don’t have privilege know that, it’s those with privilege who don’t (works the same way with race as with class, those of us with white privilege are trained not to recognize that privilege and have to be retrained in order to notice it) however I have seen this activity spark good discussion and thought more often than degrading people, although it is of course key that it is done in the right way.

Posted 07 Feb 2008 at 2:59 am ¶
Peter Schmidt wrote:

Readers interested in this post may find my Web site, http://www.colorandmoney.com, useful. I have links to a wide range of books, reports, and court opinions and legal briefs dealing with race, class, and education access. You will be able to see exactly which of the background characteristics on the lists provided in this post have been shown by educational researchers to have the most bearing on one’s long-term educational prospects. (For what it is worth, having parents who went to college has been shown to be a HUGE advantage.)

Posted 07 Feb 2008 at 9:59 am ¶
Elton wrote:

I want to echo what Paul said about the middle class assuming that the working class chose to be that way and had no hope of rising above because they were intellectually inferior.

I think I have a typical Second Generation Asian-American experience in that my parents work very long hours in the Chinese restaurant business and we haven’t had the time or money for many of the material comforts middle class Americans take for granted. No, my parents never went to college, and no, they never read me bedtime stories or helped me with my homework, but they made damn sure that I had the best possible educational opportunities. So I don’t have my own car, but I do have a top-of-the-line laptop. I haven’t been allowed to date, but I have had the privilege of excellent summer camps, research opportunities, etc. Summertime for my sister and me growing up was not about having fun, but about studying so we could get ahead in academics. If you want to call it “privilege” that I taught myself to read when I was 3 years old, then go right ahead. I guess Asian-Americans have been unusually “privileged” in what we’ve earned for ourselves, not what we’ve been given.

Posted 07 Feb 2008 at 6:35 pm ¶
Torontonian wrote:

@CMEdwards & Flo:

How does the privilege walk make it worse for people who are already disadvantaged? I ended up near the front of the room, so I don’t know what it’s like to be at the back.

@Elton:

I guess Asian-Americans have been unusually “privileged” in what we’ve earned for ourselves, not what we’ve been given.

I’m a second-generation Asian, and I’m not convinced. How did your parents get the money to open up a business? How did your parents immigrate to the United States?

Obviously, Asian immigrants are at a huge disadvantage compared to the average American-born white American, but educational access is a privilege (and also a right) that many people don’t have. Do you think studying in the summer is difficult? Many people would love to have that problem.

Posted 07 Feb 2008 at 10:13 pm ¶
Manny wrote:

I have a question for anyone who would like to respond. But first, some background:

I take 25 steps forward. Funny thing is, a lot of my high school (and college) classmates probably have similar responses, but would not consider themselves especially privileged. I’ve also tried to point out this kind of thing to certain relatives, who still insist that our family is “not rich” despite having a lot of these privileges.

I am a college student. Both of my parents have “connections” and last summer, I worked at a state agency directed by a friend of my dad’s. Great experience? Absolutely. Also entirely unfair, since students who were obviously more qualified were turned down because of my family connection.

Here’s the question: Was I wrong to take the internship?

I think this could have been a great opportunity to make a kind of statement about the obvious injustice of the whole situation, refusing to take part in a system that gives me such an unfair advantage. At the same time, I think it would have been very disrespectful to my dad and to the woman who offered me the position, and it could seem very ungrateful (and perhaps yet another sign of privilege, that I could afford to turn down such an opportunity?)

Posted 07 Feb 2008 at 10:27 pm ¶
Globalistgirl wrote:

Atlasien said “Class denial is so huge in America because we’re all supposed to be self-made people who overcome our environment.”

I think that’s right on the money. Because my father was a manager with an unusual last name at the company that half ran one of the towns I grew up in, I heard a lot of rethoric about privilege growing up. Specifically, that all managers do is sit around and drink coffee while the workers do everything that needs to be done… that I was a damn capitalist… that my family was snooty because they lived in the “nice” part of town (which wasn’t noticably different from any other part of town in the way it could be in the US). My non-US-based approach is to not even argue with privilege anymore. It would be very difficult for me to think that I have really achieved all that I have achieved on my own. However, Americans seem very reluctant to give credit where credit is due to others because they’re supposed to be “self-made”. I’ve even read a book called The European Dream by Jeremy Rifkin that makes the same point while going over what the American Dream is and what sociological effects it has on the States. I think it’s harder to deny privilege elsewhere, but on the other hand, there’s also more temptation to go the other way rub it in your old classmates’ (and other lower-class people’s) noses. “I’m snooty? Oh yeah? How’s this brand new BMW for snooty?”

Posted 08 Feb 2008 at 12:24 am ¶
donna darko wrote:

If anyone knows anything about Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, he once said that “the problem of the twentieth century was the problem of the color line”

I’ve said this before but DuBois said race is the biggest problem, Mao said it was class, Shulamith Firestone said it was gender.

Posted 11 Feb 2008 at 3:41 am ¶
donna darko wrote:

Firestone wrote biology is destiny for women and sought to change that.

I’m a second-generation Asian, and I’m not convinced. How did your parents get the money to open up a business? How did your parents immigrate to the United States?

I like what they said at the National Hip Hop Political conference. There’s money, power and respect. Economic, political and social power. APIAs only have the first.

Posted 11 Feb 2008 at 3:48 am ¶
donna darko wrote:

Has class trumped race?

Let’s just say racism, classism and sexism happen at the same time and racism and sexism are used to allocate resources towards whites, men and the wealthy.

And to solve the problems of racism, sexism and poverty separately because the first two are based on symbolic oppression or stereotypes. Poverty is also based on stereotypes of the poor, the undeserving welfare recipient or the deserving, hard-working rich, but less so that the first two.

Posted 11 Feb 2008 at 4:24 am ¶
NancyP wrote:

Oddly enough, there may be a negative effect of being extremely privileged (trust fund kids). Of course, the effects are in psychological terms and in relative mobility, not in the basic materials of life (housing, food, etc). I have seen a number of trust fund kids or “think they will have a big inheritance” kids flame out with drugs, have trouble advancing in or even holding jobs, and in general have issues with lack of motivation - in general, the “Paris Hilton syndrome” is quite real.

The “creative class” and “entrepreneurial class (with new ideas)” - these are more likely to come from those children raised with basic needs security and an obvious requirement to make a living when adult, than from the children of the very wealthy.

No questionnaire of this sort is perfect, but if discussion ensues, its existence has been useful.

Posted 20 Feb 2008 at 8:46 pm ¶
mylie wrote:

I’m only 15 (haven’t taken the SAT “for real” yet, only practiced it in the 6th and 8th grades) so some of these don’t apply to me.

If your father went to college, take a step forward.
If your father finished college
If your mother went to college
If your mother finished college
If you have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor. (May aunt is a PhD and my sister’s grandfather was a doctor. Not sure if he counts or not.)
If you were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
If you had a computer at home
If you had your own computer at home
If you had more than 50 books at home
If you had more than 500 books at home
If were read children’s books by a parent
If you ever had lessons of any kind
If you had more than two kinds of lessons
If the people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
If you went to summer camp
If you had a private tutor (a viola teacher with private lessons. Not sure if that counts as a “tutor” or not)
If you have been to Europe
If your family vacations involved staying at hotels (I was actually completely unaware that people could vacation without going to hotels, unless they were doing some sort of nature thing. I guess I’m a lot more privileged than i thought I was.)
If all of your clothing has been new and bought at the mall
If there was original art in your house (I’m not 100% sure about this one. I *think* there is, but I would have to check)
If you had a phone in your room (well, I could if I wanted to, and I do have a cellphone, but I hate calling people)
If you lived in a single family house
If your parent own their own house or apartment
If you had your own room
If you participated in an SAT/ACT prep course (I assume I will since my sister did, so I’m keeping this one.)
If you had your own cell phone in High School
If you have ever flown anywhere on a commercial airline
If you ever went on a cruise with your family (My parents paid for a cruise, a family reunion one, but never went because, surprise surprise, I was suddenly born)
If your parents took you to museums and art galleries
If you were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

1. Has anyone close to you ever overdosed on drugs? I’m really not sure. I was told how my uncle died when I was very young, and I remember something about drugs or suicide, but that might have been a creation of my young mind.

2. Did you grow up with married parents? Yes, but they should be divorcing soon and I wish they had divorced when I was very young.

3. Has anyone in your family’s social circle ever been in prison? No.

4. Has your family ever been foreclosed on? No.

5. Have your parents ever been bankrupt? No.

6. Was a family vehicle ever repossessed? No.

7. Have you seen a dentist in the past year? Yes.

8. Did your family have health insurance through an employer? Yes, through both of my parents’ employers.

9. Did your parents use pay-day loans? Since I don’t know what they are, I’ll say no.

10. Did your parents ever get threatening calls from collectors? No.

11. Have you seen a doctor in the past year? Two years? Three years? Yes, I see several (general practitioner, eyes, ears since my mother is deaf, back since I have scoliosis, dermatologist because I have a skin condition, two for my teeth, which is common thing among most people I know, etc.) and I see them on a regular basis

12. Has anyone in your immediate family ever delayed an important medical procedure because they didn’t have the money? No.

13. Did you ever move in with relatives because of financial problems? No.

14. Were you ever on reduced or free school lunch? No.

15. Was one or both parents often unemployed and looking for work? No.

16. Was your family ever evicted? No.

17. Did your family often argue about money? (This question will bring in a lot of upper-middle class folk, but lack of conflict over money is a form of privilege, too.) Plenty of arguments, but never about money.

18. Did your family have to deal with social workers? Well, my mother was a social worker, so she had to deal with her coworkers, but in all seriousness, no.

19. Are you in ROTC to pay for college? No (I’m not going to).

20. Did you serve in the military to pay for college? No (I’m not going to).

21. Did you transfer from a community college? No (I’m not going to).

22. Do you have a child? Well, I’m 15, so no.

23. Do you work more than 10 hours a week? 20 hours a week? 30 hours a week? Don’t have a job. Will have a mostly-volunteer job this summer working full time.

24. Were your parents able to help you with your homework? I’m not sure if you mean did they have the time or did they have the education, but they definitely had the time and though my mother often can’t help me with my math and science homework nowadays, my engineer father definitely can.

Posted 19 May 2008 at 7:50 pm ¶