What Privileges Do You Have?

[jlh]

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.

I've bolded what applies to me.

1. Father went to college.
2. Father finished college.
3. Mother went to college. My mother dropped out of high school to marry my father.
4. Mother finished college.
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home. My father was a big believer in libraries.
9. Were read children's books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18. Just voice.
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18.
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively. This is tricky, because I am from the north and dress from the gap, but it doesn't say look like me, which would mean race, so I'm just going to leave it blank.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.
16. Went to a private high school.
17. Went to summer camp.
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels. I'm going to admit to cheating just a little here. Our vacations such as they were involved driving to see the grandparents in Iowa, but you can't drive straight through from Maine to Iowa, so we would stay at a hotel on the way. I'm not sure that's what this question really means, though.
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.
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child. Do paintings or quilts or carvings that your relatives made count?
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house. My father built it.
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
25. You had your own room as a child. I was the only kid in the house.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18. Extension, that is.
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family. Please, every time the price of oil went up my father would have a freak out--and in the 70s it went up quite often--even though we mostly heated the house with a wood stove.

So I really appreciate this list, but it feels like it has a very strong urban and large suburban bias. I don't think many of the questions catch the rural kind of poverty that was around me as a child, where people were cash-poor but time-rich (and often land-rich) and made a lot of things by hand and that sort of thing. I mean, as a child I knew a lot of families who were on food stamps and other kinds of assistance, but I didn't know anyone who lived in an apartment--everyone lived in single family homes because we were in the country, and even a trailer is a single family home. Apartments were where people on TV lived. This worries me because rural poverty and semi-poverty is frequently ignored in this country--by republicans who like to ignore poverty in general, and by democrats because their base is more urban. And let's face it, the urban poor is much more visible than the rural poor who mostly live in "flyover" states.

Comments

[alissomora.livejournal.com]

I went through this on someone else's LJ and found that I could only bold six, but that's largely because my parents are who they are, not because of environment or anything else. So it's kinda hard to lock everybody into this, I think, because everyone comes from different backgrounds. I hope that made sense!

[miriammoules.livejournal.com]

I managed 5 bolded.

The irony of the private school was that it was cheaper for me to go on a full scholarship to a private school than to go to state school. And the irony of the housing was again that there was no alternative, more suitable, accommodation.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's a good point about the house--it really does seem like it would obviously have a lot to do with geography.

[ikyoto.livejournal.com]

The heating bill question is skewed in terms of geography too. In WA we were very aware of the cost of heat, my relatives in southern California, much less so.

I do find it kind of funny how much growing up in a small town changes the nature of these questions. For example I was privileged enough to have more than one kind of lesson growing up (though not at the same time), but in my tiny town I could get lessons with a classically trained opera singer for only $12 a lesson, which while still out of reach financially for many in the U.S. is a whole different financial scale than when I looked in NYC and a lesson of comparable quality was nearly $100 (hence I have never taken one here).

Another thing I find interesting in using these questions to look at privilege in my own life that the financial position of my parents has changed a lot over time. When I was born they lived in a trailer, when I was in jr. high they were doing great, for college they were doing a little less well. Now they are doing poorly again due to health care and employment issues. Financial security wasn't really something we took for granted, which is why I opened my own IRA with my part-time job money when I turned 18 and my parents always lived frugally. The "have you ever" nature of these questions is necessarily limited.

These questions are a great conversation starter and thought provoking, but I would love to see a larger and more refined set of questions in the future. Thanks for sharing them.