I saw this meme at Martini Ministry a few days ago and thought about doing it. Then I saw it again over at bridgett’s, and I really decided that since I’ve got so little to ramble about here, I would give it a go.
Essentially, this is a test given in college to show students how there are different levels of minor privelege in the country, and to emphasise that many folks are more privileged than they realise. In the class all students start in a straight line and then take one step forward for every marker of privilege which applies. Here I’ve put every “privilege marker” in purple bold. (Each statement is for me at age 18.)
If your father went to college before you started
If your father finished college before you started
If your mother went to college before you started
If your mother finished college before you started
If you have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
If your family was the same or higher class than your high school teachers
If you had a computer at home when you were growing up
If you had your own computer at home when you were growing up
If you had more than 50 books at home when you were growing up
If you had more than 500 books at home when you were growing up
If were read children’s books by a parent when you were growing up
If you ever had lessons of any kind as a child or a teen
If you had more than two kinds of lessons as a child or a teen
If the people in the media who dress and talk like you were portrayed positively
If you had a credit card with your name on it before college
If you had or will have less than $5000 in student loans when you graduate
If you had or will have no student loans when you graduate
If you went to a private high school
If you went to summer camp
If you had a private tutor
(US students only) If you have been to Europe more than once as a child or teen
(International question) If you have been to the US more than once as a child or teen
If your family vacations involved staying at hotels rather than KOA or at relatives homes
If all of your clothing has been new
If your parents gave you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
If there was original art in your house as a child or teen
If you had a phone in your room
If your parent owned their own house or apartment when you were a child or teen
If you had your own room as a child or teen
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 as a child or teen
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 as a child or teen
If you were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family
There’s absolutely no doubt about the fact that I was hugely blessed. I have always felt that I owe my parents much gratitude for all they did for me. I will say, though, that I think the best thing they did for me was raise me with a strong sense of the reality and nearness of God. For all the posh comforts I had before I turned 18 I also had a lot of rough times. I’ve had many rough times as an adult, too. Part of that has always been because I believe my parents gave exceptionally to me and it was up to me to do what I could do on my own once I turned 18. But every rough time, every hardship, every struggle is softened a bit simply because I’ve been able to forge a relationship with the God Who Is.
It’s been a bit of a scary week so far, and I’ve had a lot of really hurtful things to digest. I’m surprised to discover many things that I’ve found out this week, yet every time a blow has come there has also been some unexpected kindness to lift me up. I count that toward God’s goodness and the people God has placed in my life. I hope to learn from the hurt and take comfort in the kindness.
Those lessons aren’t found in books and phones and trips to Europe. That’s what’s great. They’re free to anybody.
Thank you for sharing.
Good article.
Holy cow! I always thougt I was a little pampered growing up, but I could only answer affirmatively to about 3 (maybe 4) of them.
I didn’t FEEL underpriveleged.
But, cool – I get “privelege immunity”!
[...] Poor Pitiful Me January 10, 2008 — Slartibartfast The privelege meme that’s been going around is a real eye-opener. Not because I learned how priveleged I was growing up, but because, [...]
Interesting that on a study of privilege conducted by an educational institution, so many questions had to do with… education. Yes, it’s important, but should almost half of what they consider “privileged” have to do with going to school? Aren’t there other ways to measure privilege? I didn’t see:
Did you have a car when you turned 16? (only one car question)
Were you always medically insured?
Did you pay your own fuel bills?
Did you ever take music lessons?
Did you have a job growing up?
Like so many of these things, all these questions are biased and come from one point of view. The results are interesting to discuss, but they don’t have any empirical basis in reality.
Slarti — Me too, to all that you said.
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Jason,
That was a lot of my thinking exactly. There were no religious questions and no questions about work. There were no questions about how your school performance was monitored and reinforced.
Alongside all I was given was the expectation that I work hard in school. I also had jobs, starting with babysitting at 13. I’d love to expand the meme with other questions that would truly evaluate one’s life experiences at the hands of her parents.
Privilege Meme
There’s a new (to me) meme going around. Apparently it’s a test given to college students illustrate privilege taken for granted by many people. I suppose it could be a helpful tool for a few but I think it largely confuses “privile…
Interesting. In high school, I went to a a public school, but it was the school that had a lot of rich neighborhoods in its district. Our familiy was pretty much in the middle of the middle class, but that was not the perception around school.
Still, answering those questions, I can’t exactly say I have been deprived.
Here’s a question I’d like to add. “Did you grow up in a household with two stable parents?”
Two things I meant to add. This looks like it’s designed to break the kids down with guilt, before they begin their retraining as good little liberals in various “studies” classes. Kind of like Birkenstock Paris Island.
Second, I probably should have added at my place that although my answers were amost totally negative, the answers for my CHILDREN, even now at ages 10 and 11, would almost entirely be positive. According to this meme, my kids are downright pampered.
They are pampered (compared to my upbringing), but they are not spoiled. They serve others. They are comfortable around people of any race or economic condition (I was not at that age – I was uncomfortable around very rich or very poor people). I don’t think they are as thankful for what they have as I’d like them to be, but we’ve got 8 or so more years to work on that.
This meme would be nothing but counterproductive if my children were subjected to it.
Wait a minute. Before we break out the sarcasm quotes for “studies” classes — I teach those classes. The reason that we use exercises like this is because 18 year olds think everyone is exactly like them. That’s the nature of the beast, developmentally speaking. In some colleges, freshman year maybe will be the first place that a kid encounters someone with extremely different values and background (especially from one’s own country). Illustrating that everyone has had different opportunities and challenges puts them in the position of being able to figure out why they think what they think and being able to understand, with some work, why their own viewpoints are not universal.
I agree that the implementation could be, in the hand of an earnest cudgel-wielding comrade, a “blunt trauma” pedagogy. But it doesn’t have to be.
It sounds like a good exercise, but they left out a few critical ones, the most obvious being:
Your opposite-sex parent portrayed your gender as a positive thing.
Your same-sex parent portrayed your gender as a positive thing.
Well, there’s problems in that whole set of exercises. When you get to their “red questions”/”blue questions” asking about common class-inflected cultural items (like “What is Zabar’s?” “What is the Nextel Cup?” “What type of items does Carharts produce?” “Where is Dean and DeLuca located?” “What type of things are sloops and ketchs?” “What’s Manchild’s real name?”), they generally identify all urban things as blue and all rural things as red and nearly all of the red questions involve things that are generally white pursuits (NASCAR, tractor pulls, etc). I can imagine a working-class urban black student finding out that he or she scores low on both red state and blue state “common knowledge.” That’s probably reflective of the designer’s own location and cultural biases. Even a flawed exercise can be used to stimulate student discussion about how it should be improved though, which leads to some startling insights in how students do and don’t think about class.
I feel kinda cool for knowing all the answers to the red/blue questions except for Manchild. (When I hear “manchild” I think of the BBC tv series.)
The younger you are the more priviledged you were – computers and cell phones have gotten cheaper.
I feel for those unlucky folks at the back of the line. Who knows but in a classroom, I may lie a bit so as to not be the last in line.
You didn’t have your own t.v., did you? I think for kids to have their own t.v. should almost be considered an anti-privilege, but that’s probably just my “education” bias.