I like the series of posts on privilege making their way around the soc blogs today (see here and here and so on)…and was SHOCKED to see how I ranked.** We were solidly middle-class growing up but my parents are hardy midwestern types who would never flaunt wealth, never drive a car where reliability wasn’t the main consideration, and never took us to fancy stores to shop. Still, wow.
Yes (23):
1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor (two cousins are attorneys – I’m more proud that Dad dropped out of law school)
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children’s books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 (golf, which I hated, and saxophone, which I loved – I wasn’t a geek, really)
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
17. Went to summer camp.
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them.
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
25. You had your own room as a child
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up. (The big joke about me is how quickly I can get in and out of an art museum without appreciating anything. Best record, the Louvre in Paris = 20 minutes. This is not something I am proud of but try as I might, visual art isn’t really my thing)***
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family. Yes, with caveats (3):
16. Went to a private high school. (This doesn’t really count since the private school happened after a protracted period of juvenile delinquency – it was really more of a school for screw-ups. Still, my parents did have the financial wherewithal to enroll me in the school for screw-ups and this is probably why the delinquency had no lasting influence)
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18. (Again, like the high school noted above, the tutor was more to make up for skipping a lot of math classes in order to engage in assorted illegal high jinks)
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child. (Do strange paintings of various US and European golf courses count?)No (5):
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18. (I’m not sure my parents want me to have a credit card now)
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
No, with caveat (3):15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs. (To be fair, they would have but I insisted on shacking up with my boyfriend and they certainly weren’t going to pay for that. They did pay my brother’s (aka “the good one”) living expenses)
31. Went on a cruise with your family. (Are cruises really a sign of privilege? I was taken to Europe but my family would never go on a cruise – hard to visit art museums on a boat. I’d probably love cruises)
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
* “From What Privileges Do You Have?,” an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University.
**Having pondered this a bit, the reason I am shocked is because my day-to-day life wasn’t terribly privileged (though certainly not impoverished and still solidly middle-class). My parents divorced when I was young and my father, whom I did not live with, provided most of the “yes” activities above. ***The Mona Lisa is surprisingly small but displayed on a really large white wall that emphasizes its small size.
I thought not having divorced parents / growing up with a single parent was one of the more glaring absences on the list.
Me too. Any deprivation I ever felt in adolescence was probably due to a change in circumstances following the divorce (large at first, diminshing rapidly over time) and the comparison to kids who lived around me with married parents. Relative vs. absolute strikes again, I guess.
[...] though have since seen it pop-up elsewhere, and have to agree with the comments regarding it here (though my description of the divorce awareness factor would be exactly inverted from what New Prof [...]
What all the qualifiers we all need to add while tabulating our “yesses” and “noes” (are those words?) show is that the questions are strongly contextual and very “American”.
But as an exercise to introduce the concepts related to unearned privilege, I find this worthwhile.
Again, this also presents a good opportunity to introduced Bourdieu’s concepts of capitals.
[...] anomie, Scatterplot, the New Prof, Union Street and other socio-bloggers have done this test circulating in the socio-blogosphere in [...]
Social Privilege
Via Wicked Anomie, this list of social privilege markers has been making the rounds of the sociological blogosphere. Every time you answer yes to one of these propositions, it adds to the amount of privilege you enjoyed. Of course, the maximum is 33.
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