Privilege meme

[vilakins]

From communicator and mraltariel so far.

I have changed 'college' to 'university' and struck out those questions that don't apply outside the US. Actually I was fairly privileged compared to many in this country, though it may not look like it to Americans who read this.

Bold the true statements.

1. Father went to university
2. Father finished university
3. Mother went to university
4. Mother finished university
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor (a cousin who is a physics one)
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home (we all belonged to the library and I read 4-6 books a week)
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
9. Were read children's books by a parent (my mother: I learned to read at 3 from watching the words as she did so)
10. Had [out of school] lessons of any kind before you turned 18 (dance, piano)
11. Had more than two kinds of [out of school] lessons before you turned 18
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively. You must be joking--women who don't look like models?
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 university costs. (Neither - my main costs were board and living expenses which were mostly met by a government bursary and a private scholarship)
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your university costs.
16. Went to a private high school (I went to three high schools--we moved a lot--and two were private)
17. Went to summer camp
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.
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. (Nope, not till I left home)
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
27. Participated in an 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.

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, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.)

Comments

[the-summoning-d.livejournal.com]

I got 17 of them. Which just shows that this really doesn't cross over between cultures.

[vandonovan.livejournal.com]

How would taking the SAT/ACT count as priviledged? When I took it, it was a required exam.

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

I have no desire to do this meme mainly because it is so American based.

Besides I have an inbuilt objection to being catalogued and labelled according to some one else's standards of what does or does not constitute "privilege".
Mind you I'm still amused that they consider more than 500 books a sign of privilege as my sister's and mine personal collection was well over that thanks to a local secondhand bookshop and several school jumble sales.
Mind you I'm not sure how they would class Kung Fu and Fencing classes? I'm sure they were thinking more traditionally.

[daiseechain.livejournal.com]

True.

Several of these weren't even options growing up in NZ - at least up till the late 80s/early 90s. And yet others were taken for granted by the entire population.

[daiseechain.livejournal.com]

14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your university costs. (Neither - I had a government bursary and a private scholarship)

OK. I'm surprised to read this. Mayhap my memory is fuzzy, but wasn't the tuition basically free for all those passing U.E. - at least until the entire system collapsed?

I attended Uni (the first attempt) in the late 80's, and all I had to pay for were the writing paper and pens basically. By the time my sister attended less than 3 years later, she had to get two jobs to pay for it all! Talk about a complete reversal.

[the-summoning-d.livejournal.com]

My house has over 5000 books. What do you think they'd make of that?

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I had to leave home to go to uni; my boarding costs were almost all covered by a bursary and a private scholarship. I couldn't have gone otherwise.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I thought it was interesting to show up differences between cultures and countries.

I have an inbuilt objection to being catalogued and labelled

So do I, but this doesn't. There's no "If you got more than x, you were privileged, between y and z..." etc.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

The thing is, counting books doesn't tell you that much depending on where you live. Books were very expensive here (it's still not much better) so we only owned reference and language books. Our library system is an excellent one though and I read 6 books a week on average.

Because of this, I still rarely buy books; I borrow from the library.

[daiseechain.livejournal.com]

Ah! Of course! Sorry, I lived in a University town and momentarily forgot that not everyone else did. All the kids I knew that went, lived at home till they finished - the govt said we lived far too close to Uni to get extra help. Damn cheeky of them, wanting to give the money to students who actually might need it :-)

If it's not too intrusive a question - which degree did you do?

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

If they want an exercise on privilege, where are the questions on inside toilets and plumbed in baths?

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

And credit cards weren't available until I was an adult.

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Presumably though the questions are evaluated in some way to work out "privilege".

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

It also doesn't take into account the type of books. I mean 500+ "Mills and Boon" (shudder)is rather different from 500+ sci fi / fantasy.
(My book collection is an eclectic mix of romances (mainly Heyers) detective, vampire scifi/ fantasy folk and fairy tales and classics like Odysseus, the Iliad etc.

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

School or home? Our primary school merrily froze us every time we needed the loo even in summer.
Also walk, bus or car to school not to mention day school or board?

[san-valentine.livejournal.com]

It did strike me that not only are the questions American biased, they don't apply very well prior to the 1980's.

I know perfectly well that I had a relatively privileged childhood, but I never had a phone or telly in my bedroom. Most houses in the UK only had one of each in the 70's/80's, and they would be in communal spaces like the hall or living room.

Also, when I went to University, there were no tuition fees, and through some creative accounting by my self-employed father, I got a full grant from the government. My parents didn't have to pay anything (though I still got a monthly allowance from them)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

BSc in Physics. You?

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

In their study, probably. It's just a discussion starter on LJ--and it worked!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yes, it doesn't exactly fit our countries, does it? Both my private schools were boarding ones, but I only boarded at one of them. And I hated it.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Actually most of us here had both, in my parents' day too. I do know it's different in the UK. Isn't it interesting how different things are in different places? You OTOH earn a lot more than we do, and we're also disadvantaged by isolation.

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

The question is were you privately tutored for it, or at least that's how I read it.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I never had a phone or telly in my bedroom. Most houses in the UK only had one of each in the 70's/80's, and they would be in communal spaces like the hall or living room.

That's still true here, actually (we're a lot poorer in general than the UK) but most people have mobiles / cell phones.

As for uni, my biggest costs were living expenses as I had to leave home, but I was lucky to get those covered by grants and a scholarship. I wouldn't have been able to go otherwise.

[vandonovan.livejournal.com]

Aaah, I see. "Prep course" makes sense. I got a book I was supposed to study from, hahahha. Does that count?

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

I've answered these for the post war working class babyboomers of the UK mainly to throw a second thread into the discussion. Time as well as space is a very great devider.

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

Italicize that question as ambiguous as I did with a couple of my answers.%P

[vandonovan.livejournal.com]

Hahaha. I could, but I'm not going to fill the thing out. I don't need to answer those questions to know I was priviledged. I also refuse to feel guilty about that.

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

Same here.

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

That is more or less what I said at the end of my answers, I did it out of curiosity. as a child of the 50s I know I lived in a different world, I just wondered how different.

[daiseechain.livejournal.com]

I never actually finished. I began a degree in English at Canterbury, dropped out for not knowing what the hell I wanted to do, picked it up again later in Wellington, but switched to a BSc which is what I realised I was far more interested in, but left again before completion due to international move.

Currently looking at doing a combined Writing/Science over here in the UK, but I have to save lots first. Am determined to finish it at some point. Don't want to be the only woman in my family without one.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Go you!

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I'm *astonished* that you guys don't have summer camp--I'd have thought that that's where you'd go to learn things like sailing and woodcraft. Errr, unless you have a winter school vacation and that's when your parents are glad to have you out from underfoot for a few weeks you go and learn sailing and woodcraft?

When I was a kid, I always went to summer camp because my mother had to work and it pretty much worked out cheaper than having a baby-sitter.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Nope, we have nothing like that here. Some schools might run an outdoor course for a few weeks at a facility in the bush, but most don't. The bush and the sea are never far away though: many people tramp (hike / ramble / whatever), and my sister and I had a small yacht like the Amazons' one in 'Swallows and Amazons' which we sailed on the lake near our house, and our father had a larger one that took four of us. Most people went camping for a summer holiday; we always did.

A strange coincidence: we sold our little boat and a few years later, our brother (11 years younger) bought one up here in Auckland--and it was our old one, but painted!

Most parents work here as they don't earn enough for one to stay home, but I suppose the kids look after themselves in the holidays. We did once we were 12 and older.

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

Both.

I was in my early teens when we got the council grant to help pay for a bathroom to be installed. The whole terrace when for it at the same time so that we only had to put up with the inconvenience of building work round the back once.

Mt primary school had toilets and washbasins fitted inside the year before I left. We were all amazed by these as none of us had anything like that at home. Going across a cold playground certainly discouraged trying to get out of lessons for that.

Did they have to melt the free school milk on the radiators at your school too?

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

Summer camp doesn't exist in the UK either. Most councils run play schemes for the under twelves but that only occupies them for two or three hours a day.

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

they don't apply very well prior to the 1980's.

"The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there." L P Hartley

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

No the milk was kept by the headmasters office (oddly enough one of the warmest parts all year round) . It always tasted warm and I hated warm milk. It took a real effort of will to drink it.

[san-valentine.livejournal.com]

There are companies in the UK who run holidays for children, though they're not quite the same as the US summer camp. When I was about 10 I went on a PGL adventure holiday, and did sailing, canoeing, riding, archery and orienteering. In my early teens I went on riding holidays with friends, which were fun.

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

I had considered PGL, but they don't come cheaper than a babysitter. We couldn't afford it so took ours camping instead, they have memories of Augusts so cold and wet they would go to the sanitary block to stand under the hot air hand driers.