John Scalzi has a rather scathing post up on the subject of the "privilege checklist" apparently deployed by professors at Indiana State to show their charges what a bunch of pampered sissies they all are. I share a number of Scalzi's objections: like him, for example, I wasn't read children's books because I learned to read very young. He goes on to list the number of ways that he, who was not privileged, nonetheless registers as privileged by this checklist. I, who had a pretty soft upbringing, must also protest. Many of the things on the list have nothing to do with "privilege", and in fact, I didn't get them, because my parents poured pretty much all of their disposable income into educating me: vacations, for example. Many of the other things on that checklist--getting a new car from your parents, going on a cruise with your family, having a television in your room--were rare among my ultra-privileged private school classmates because they were seen as vulgar; not having those things was a sign of higher social class. (I think some of that's changed now, though, from what I gather, not the disdain for cruise ships.) This list reeks of academics confusing their petit-bourgeois disdain of ostentation with actual privilege. Having a television in your own room is a sign of poverty mostly to the less well remunerated castes of the lower-middle class, who always feel they should be pouring the money into something more worthy; it is not an uncommon sight among welfare families in New York City.
Vacations with hotels are an even less reliable indicator of "privilege". Aside from a youthful trip to Niagara Falls, I can't remember any family vacation that did not involve visiting relatives, or did involve an airline flight. I can think of no way in which this hampered my development as a fully actualized human being, or an economically productive member of society; nor do I think that the fact that I have not been to Disneyland1 materially affected my chances at Harvard2. I'm a child of privilege not because my family gave me fantastic leisure opportunities, but because the circumstances of my birth and upbringing made it relatively easy for me to choose my path in life. Every one of those professors' kids is more privileged, in that sense, than the child of the median car-dealership owner.
1But didn't your parents love you? cried one friend, upon learning this.
2Though in fairness, any effect would probably have been swamped by my anemic high school GPA.
Uh, or car salesman. The dealership owners I'm less sure about.
Ah.
And speaking generally? Americans need less awareness about the obscene privilege and abundance we are the recipients of, because of the historical and geographic accident of where and when we were born?
How many students of privilege attend Indiana State in any case?
Freddie, the issue is not international privilege, but intranational.
Even then, I'm not sure what all the guilt-mongering is supposed to accomplish other than to annoy students and discredit academics in the eyes of fairly average Americans.
so many of these things may have been true 30 years ago, but have no meaning today... seems stupid to index in this way. Consumer goods and trends are constantly changing, and it seems as if much of the list is predicated on that.
In my book, one of the biggies, is when does the kid start working? If they have to work to BUY a car for themselves, or to put themselves through college, perhaps that's a dividng line. Though, there are probably still parents out there that thing it is a good idea to make the kid work for something even if they could give it to them, as a lesson for adulthood.
Makes me wonder if they are only measuring their own dissatisfaction...
Umm, the game-writers seem to have serious problems defining exactly what priveleges they are talking about. They are confusing the priveleges of having educated or smart parents and having wealthy parents - these are only loosely correlated. In addition, there are major priveleges to having a functional (e.g. non-abusive) family with good social skills; this is at least as important as the others, and none of those priveleges are even captured. Also, the test doesn't seem to consider the changes wrought by economic growth, which means that social class distinctions are constantly changing, and that the indicators of privelege today are not the same problems as twenty years ago. Which means that the signals of privelege that today's college students grew up with are not the same signals that are in effect for current 12-year olds, as Mr. Scalzi points out using the fast-dropping prices of cell phones and computers as examples.
I recall lots of (relatively) lower-class teens at my high school who had their own cars and cell phones, because they all had jobs after school and earned their own money, often appearing to be "richer" than some upper-class kids. The upper-class kids were too busy studying and building their college resume with sports and activities to have a job, and often had strict parents who limited what they bought and wore. But again, these distinctions are between those who value education highly and those who value it less, not between rich and poor.
I also noticed this effect in the recent movie version of "Bridge to Terabithia" - the plot, depicting a lower-middle class white family growing up in Oregon, is straight from the '70's, and the depiction of economic problems are those of the '70's, not those of today. For example, Josh has to wear his sister's hand-me-down pink running shoes, when a new pair of shoes can be had at Wal-Mart for
Nobody is getting drafted and sent to Vietnam. Does that make everybody more privileged than the males of my generation?
It's interesting that a professor is doing this, but that you and John put so much effort into rebuttals suggests you think it really has an adverse effect on students. I can recall seeing stuff like this occasionally in college, and generally walking away chuckling that some Bozo with a PhD in basketweaving is pissed off about his own irrelevance and/or that he's making less than engineering grads will be making 20 minutes after graduation. They remind me of Donald Sutherland's character in "Back to School" ("this is my job!"). Do you really think there's much impact here apart from the waste of the student's time?
J-
I see you are taking the Jonah Goldberg route and telling colleges what degrees they do and do not offer. However, in reality, Indiana State University DOES NOT OFFER A PHD IN BASKETWEAVING. No one else does either.
"I can recall seeing stuff like this occasionally in college, and generally walking away chuckling that some Bozo with a PhD in basketweaving is pissed off about his own irrelevance and/or that he's making less than engineering grads will be making 20 minutes after graduation."
Exactly. Only Donald Sutherland was in "Animal House".
He didn't say ISU offered PhDs in basketweaving, he said that someone named Bozo--who apparently is neither well-known nor well paid--held one from an unknown source.
The list does seem really uninformed and wrong-headed. Here are some more issues:
1. You could easily pick up 50 books for free or almost free, even as a kid. Growing up, I got some very nice books (which I eventually plan to reclaim from my parents' home) from the local library surplus sale for 25 cents each.
2. What is "original art" anyway? I have some very fine pieces on my fridge done by my 5-year-old, but I don't think that's what they mean. Likewise, crafty friends have given us a handmade pillow and some one-of-a-kind baby blankets, and some day down the road I may buy a few Indian baskets, or ask for one or two of my mom's art school projects, or buy a quilt from the local Christian commune. I think that the line between sentimental keepsake and "art" is hard to draw, unless you own Picassos.
3. How far do they want you to go when identifying a relative who's a doctor, lawyer, or professor (which is a pretty narrow range of professions, by the way)? My grandma's sister's husband and one of my grandma's brothers brothers were professors at minor institutions, but I have a huge, genealogically-minded family.
4. Summer camp is not a sign of real privilege--a place like DC has lots of poorer children enrolled in city summer programs, and busloads of kids spend their days frolicing in the city pools.
5. Likewise, in DC the museums are generally free.
6. The single-family home question was also a doozy. Where we live now in a medium-sized city in Texas, you can buy a single family home in the rotting central core for $10K, $12K, $15K. Similar pricing can be encountered in Detroit, the more miserable parts of upstate New York, and areas of the Midwest (including Indiana). Or you could be less privileged and live in a million dollar DC rowhouse or condo...Also, how are we defining single-family home? Does a mobile home count? Some mobile home owners add on to them, creating hybrid homes that are hard to categorize. Also, in places like suburban Maryland, there's a tendency for single-family homes to be used as boarding houses for as many people as can be packed in. Theoretically, they're all family.
All in all, I think the people who do these privilege tests would be on more solid ground if they replaced their list with one of Jeff Foxworthy's "You Might Be a Redneck" books. It would be more fun, too.
You and Scalzi are just nit-picking. The point of the exercise is to identify some of the ways in which our successes are affected by happenstance of birth. Sure, the questions may not be perfectly suited for the hyper-privileged at your respective hoity-toity private schools, but for the contrast they were probably aiming for (between the upper-middle and the poor) they seem ok.
But even some of those that you don't step forward on due to a technicality (I didn't go on a cruise because it was seen as tawdry (ha!) ), should still lead you to reflect about how your background and route to where you are in life were eased relative to some of your peers. And that's pretty much the point, right?
This is all really interesting, but what I really want to know, Megan, is what kind of breakfast you had this morning. Ever since your riveting New Year's Day post about humane bacon and whiskey poured straight into the eggnog carton (you animal, you!), well, I've been tuning in for more glimpses into your breakfast nook. How about a remembrance of the breakfast buffet at your private school?
Is it a sign of privilege if my first thoughts on reading the quiz were:
"Well, obviously this privilege quiz is scaled for Indiana State students" and
"If students don't come to school knowing which of the other kids are 'not our sort,' it's a little late to start teaching them."
Amy P's Jeff Foxworthy comment is on the mark. The test seems to conflate "rural upbringing" and "unprivileged" to a surprising degree. (This is even more noticeable in the "Social Knowledge Test" found on the Prof's website). I think I scored lower on that privilege scale than the average person who went to high school on the South side of Chicago would have, but it would be ridiculous to claim that I faced less adversity getting into college. (On the other hand, maybe the social divide at Indiana State really is between Rednecks and Suburbanites).
"Though in fairness, any effect would probably have been swamped by my anemic high school GPA."
Unless you were admitted to Penn based on some spectacular athletic ability, your grades must have been quite good to get in there. This sort of self-deprecation from an Ivy grad is a little too precious.
It does seem that most of the questions assign "privilege" either to ordinary middle-middle class things, or to circumstances that don't always have much to do with serious wealth. Take having your own bedroom -- common for only children, but rare for kids in big Catholic families. Lots of kids are only children because their parents can't afford more, and lots of people with big families have plenty of money to pay for them. Or take commercial air travel -- common in childhood if Grandma lives in Florida, but rare if she lives down the street. And plenty of kids wash cars for years so they can go to Europe as exchange students on scholarship.
Very few of these tap into the REAL indicators of wealth, such as whether families have the connection to land the children in really posh jobs. The student loans one maybe. Even private schools include Catholic schools and scholarship students, and private schools may not be any better than good public schools anyhow.
Fred-
Attending a prestigious private school probably has more to do with getting into an ivy than GPA
Patrick wrote: You and Scalzi are just nit-picking. The point of the exercise is to identify some of the ways in which our successes are affected by happenstance of birth.
Maybe. But at a glance, it reads like yet another mindless attempt to promote an ideological position by burning down wide ranges of context into the same shoebox' worth of ashes, then recasting the ashes into a one-size-hits-all brick in the service of that ideological position.
I had the same thought as Fred.
Privileged is being somewhere other than at that test.
"these privilege tests would be on more solid ground if they replaced their list with one of Jeff Foxworthy's "You Might Be a Redneck" books"
The "Social Class Knowledge Quiz" contains a lot of NASCAR questions in what I suppose is the "lower class" column, which suggests they've either never priced tickets for a NASCAR event or don't consider wealth a factor in social class.
"Only Donald Sutherland was in "Animal House". "
My bad on the movie - it was indeed "Animal House". It's been awhile since I watched either.
"Indiana State University DOES NOT OFFER A PHD IN BASKETWEAVING"
Bozo (actually the name of a clown) is a term for people one doesn't take seriously. Likewise, degrees that are viewed by the job market as about as useful as a GED are (at least in my peer group) frequently referred to as "basket weaving" degrees. They are slang terms. Next time I'll try to be more clear.
I thought the weirdest part of the Social Privilege Quiz was the question about snipe hunting being on the "redneck" side, but the question about Purdy Over and Under being on the "blue-blood" side. Really, if you asked a snipe hunter what a "(blank) over and under" was, don't you think he'd say it was a shotgun? And for that matter, don't you think a bass fisherman might known the names of some common flies?
Or maybe I got both questions wrong.
On the other hand, maybe the social divide at Indiana State really is between Rednecks and Suburbanites.
I think you're onto something here. This was definitely the case at the land-grant school I went to over a decade ago (Va Tech)
"Unless you were admitted to Penn based on some spectacular athletic ability, your grades must have been quite good to get in there. This sort of self-deprecation from an Ivy grad is a little too precious."
"I had the same thought as Fred.
One of the most common and unfortunate misconceptions about entrance into the Ivy League. I've recommended this book all over the place, but it bears repeating: Jerome Karabel's The Chosen is invaluable if you're going to talk about these issues.
(Incidentally, these misconceptions are especially aggravating in discussions of affirmative action, where this extreme overestimation of the importance of academic excellence in college admissions is particularly distorting.)
I just enjoy the unexamined assumption that one would naturally have one's own room to have a TV in, or not.
Oddly, some of the questions had upper limits.
Take a step forward...
If you had more than 50 books at home
If you had more than 500 books at home
If you had more than 500 books at home by just mystery writers
If you had more books than bookcases
And the Social Knowledge quiz that J mentions is a hoot. Fly tying is blue and funnel cakes are red? Who knew!
Aargh. Sorry for the multiple posting, but "more books than bookcases" should have been "more books than bookshelf space"
The 2:42 J wrote: Bozo (actually the name of a clown) is a term for people one doesn't take seriously. Likewise, degrees that are viewed by the job market as about as useful as a GED are (at least in my peer group) frequently referred to as "basket weaving" degrees. They are slang terms. Next time I'll try to be more clear.
I admire your patient spunk. But in this case, ya better turn your bozo detector up to a higher threshold.
Likewise, degrees that are viewed by the job market as about as useful as a GED are (at least in my peer group) frequently referred to as "basket weaving" degrees.
Yes. And if your opinion of education is that it has value only in its ability to make the recipient money, you are not someone whose opinion is worth engaging.
And if your opinion of education is that it has value only in its ability to make the recipient money, you are not someone whose opinion is worth engaging.
Far be it from me to stereotype academics as arrogant or out of touch, but that would most likely be a solid majority of Americans whose opinions are not worth engaging, Freddie (with wiggle room for that rather strong "only,"). And given the high cost of college, I can't say that they're wrong to worry about the cost-benefit balance.
But Freddie-
A basketweaving degree is a degree in an applied field. Presumably the graduate work required to earn an advanced degree in basketweaving prepares the student to do research in the field of basketweaving. Just as someone with a Ph.D. in economics can do economic consulting--with does not require the high-level research skills used in writing a dissertation--someone with a Ph.D. in basketweaving can weave baskets, but also devise innovative ways of weaving baskets. Now for a philosophy degree...
A basketweaving degree is a degree in an applied field.
Maybe at one time. But with the general decline of education standards and the gradual loss of the academic moorings in the western basket canon that started in the 1960's, basket weaving has taken an increasingly theoretical turn, meaning that many of today's basket weaving graduates produce work which quite literally does not hold water.
How long before somebody hangs a urinal on the wall and calls it a "basket"?
The Social Knowledge quiz is odd. The elite side seems overweighted with antiquated WASPisms, while the non-elite side is overweighted with NASCAR and WWE (even though lots of upper-middle class boys LOVE professional wrestling). Guns and fly-fishing figure in heavily on both sides (as far as I could understand--I couldn't find the answer key). The quiz ignores the importance of region. Also, anybody notice how biased it is toward traditional masculine interests? There were very few questions that I could answer with much confidence, despite having lived in both blue collar and elite environments.
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?
I think questions of that sort would be a lot more informative, but they'd all be highly intrusive. But at least the answers would be more revealing. As Scalzi's commentors point out, the framers of the privilege checklist focus on consumption of relatively inexpensive electronic items (cell phones, TVs), ignoring that compared to the expensive of health insurance or medical costs, these are relatively inexpensive. The questions also focus on consumption, rather than the family's bottom line. A family might have almost all those trappings of "privilege" while being grossly over-extended.
America's universities are, of course, the envy of the world. Our higher education system is absolutely without peer; our universities educate more people than ever before; they have, in general, become more and more financially solvent, even though the vast majority are non-profit entities; and, yes, the financial benefits of a degree for all fields and majors compared to non-degree holders has never been higher.
There is no field more beset by meaningless caricature and broad, useless stereotypes than academia. The truth is, the academy, and the humanities, are by many measures healthier and more productive today than they have ever been.
But don't let those facts get in the way of your reality-free insults!
"if your opinion of education is that it has value only in its ability to make the recipient money, you are not someone whose opinion is worth engaging"
I believe I mentioned usefulness, not money. Look in the mirror for that inference. It's not my fault the ability to discuss tedious, unreadable books or wow those fat sophmore chicks you hoped to sleep with with trite Santayana quotes just makes people in the real world roll their eyes.
Nevertheless, I apologize for hitting a nerve, and would be honored if you henceforth referred to me as "Bozo". Hell, I can't even keep "Animal House" and "Back to School" straight.
There is no field more beset by meaningless caricature and broad, useless stereotypes than academia.
Oh, I don't know about that. It looks to me like "underprivileged" and "privileged" (and/or "Red" and "Blue") America have both come in for some thoroughly meaningless caricature and broad, useless stereotyping by academia.
One of the greatest privileges is growing up with parents for whom failure is not an option.
Yes. I distinctly remember the latest analysis put out by a top-tier poly sci department where they defined 'right-leaning' or 'conservative' voters as quote unquote slack jawed yokels
Rickm,
I was referring to the privlege game and social quiz referenced by this very post: they seem to be based on weird stereotypes with a tenuous connection to reality.
And as it happens, there have been academic studies purporting to show that conservatives have a range of negative congnitive or psychological characterics.
"America's universities are, of course, the envy of the world."
That reputation is due mainly to the quality of the hard science and engineering programs at America's top public and private universities. A lot of useless and counterproductive humanities programs free-ride on that reputation (e.g., "queer studies", postmodern literary criticism, anti-white agitation in the guise of "diversity studies", etc.). That reputation is also due to the desire of many smart people from around the world to live in America; getting a student visa is a first step on the path to permanent residency.
Nevertheless, higher education in America is bloated and deserving of plenty of criticism. Outside of the elite private schools and flagship state schools -- most of which offer quality educations at reasonable prices -- there are whole tiers of private colleges and universities that provide little more than sinecures for an oversupply of Ph.D.s who would have few job prospects in the private sector. These lower-tier schools are effectively a racket redistributing income from often lower-middle class students and their parents to professors and administrators who offer these students little of value.
The intent of the experience is awareness of class, and privilege is one way to begin to look at the complexities of class. We sought to write general statements that would apply to many people, and were aware that there were exceptions to every one for good reasons, especially among the privileged. There is a difference between having a child read alone because they are able and having the time to share a reading experience with your child, even if they can read. We are also aware that many class groups actively reject the behaviors and values of class groups that are different, which makes any collection of items inherently inaccurate for everyone.
One of our points in any discussion that we have on class is that most people see class only from within their experience, so what is privilege and class for one person is often quite different for another. Generalizing one's experience to everyone's experience is probably not the best way to understand difference.
Class is wonderfully complicated and our few items were selected from the research literature to reflect privilege coming from parental education, occupation, wealth, attitudes toward education and child rearing and other aspects of family life. All of these are interrelated. 29% of the US 25-29 year old adults in 2005 had attained their Bachelor's degree, the other 81% have different lives and different experiences. Similarly the children of college graduates have a different life, as a group, than do the children of non college graduates (http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/2001126.pdf). This is a generalization of course.
I find it interesting that people make assumptions, especially class related assumptions, about me, about the others who created this experience, and about ISU without bothering to contact any of us. ISU has a strong and proud tradition of taking large numbers of first generation students whose parents did not go to college - over the past several years more than half of our students are first generation. This makes us much more class diverse campus than most.
I really appreciate the discussions generated in this and other threads that get people thinking and talking about class.
Will Barratt
""America's universities are, of course, the envy of the world."
That reputation is due mainly to the quality of the hard science and engineering programs at America's top public and private universities. A lot of useless and counterproductive humanities programs free-ride on that reputation (e.g., "queer studies", postmodern literary criticism, anti-white agitation in the guise of "diversity studies", etc.)."...
"Nevertheless, higher education in America is bloated and deserving of plenty of criticism. Outside of the elite private schools and flagship state schools -- most of which offer quality educations at reasonable prices -- there are whole tiers of private colleges and universities that provide little more than sinecures for an oversupply of Ph.D.s who would have few job prospects in the private sector. These lower-tier schools are effectively a racket redistributing income from often lower-middle class students and their parents to professors and administrators who offer these students little of value."
Posted by Fred | January 8, 2008 7:37 AM
"...29% of the US 25-29 year old adults in 2005 had attained their Bachelor's degree, the other 81% have different lives and different experiences."
Posted by Will Barratt | January 8, 2008 7:42 AM
Will, that ain't close enough for Engineering work..
Here's another point that was mentioned briefly on the Scalzi thread: the Europe question ignores the fact that a whole lot of Americans wind up seeing Europe via the armed forces, either while serving in Germany, stationed as a spouse, or growing up there as a kid (or God forbid, getting evacuated to a hospital in Germany after being wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan). I hear that base schools are pretty good (and do rather well with minority children), but thinking that "going to Europe" means sight-seeing, fancy hotels, and fine dining bespeaks a huge lack of knowledge of how Americans live. Likewise someone here or on the Scalzi thread was mentioning adopted Romanian orphans and Eastern European immigrants. Albania and impoverished areas of the former Yugoslavia are technically Europe, but I wouldn't without other evidence describe them as "privileged."
The whole project is a big nuance-free zone.
"I wouldn't without other evidence describe immigrants from those countries as privileged."
My parents struggled a lot financially when I was a kid, but (barring major catastrophe) our kids are going to grow up very comfortably upper-middle class. They are never, never going to have TVs in their rooms.
shorter McMegan:
"Here is a test of whether one grew up privileged, which fails, methodologically, on several accounts — allowing me to quibble with a spooky and onrushing realization that I am a Manhattan-prep-school ‘libertarian’ who, by birth, has never had to move a muscle except to further empower herself."
Who *is* this sollipsistic twit named Megan McArdle and why does a reputable outfit like The Atlantic give her a pulpit.
Fred-
Universities ARE the private sector.
RickM,
From Wikipedia:
There a handful of exceptions, e.g., for-profit universities such as the University of Phoenix or DeVry, but I wasn't referring to them above.
"If your family vacations involved staying at hotels rather than KOA or at relatives homes"
Uh, who can afford KOA?
I liked Amy P's list better. But my Dad defines "really poor" as when you set out rabbit snares and try to sneak up on a woodchuck with a rock to put meat on the table. (Rural Iowa in the 1930's.)
Either the writers of this test have no idea of what real poverty is, or they are trying to distinguish upper middle class from the really rich - but that doesn't work because the upper middle class is full of posers spending money they don't have, while many of the really rich live unostentatious middle-class lives. Billionaire Ross Perot lived in a medium size house in the suburbs and mowed his own lawn until he became politically ambitious. The poorest family in the neighborhood where I lived in the 1960's rented a dilapidated five bedroom house so their kids had their own rooms, while the successful building contractor's 8 kids had to double up in their brand-new home. My wife, who comes from basically a working class background, went to school with and lived two blocks away from the daughter of the oldest and richest family in town. (This was a small town, not a suburb; it makes a difference.) Whether you had a TV in your room depends little on family wealth but much on how old you are (absolutely no one I know my age did, not surprisingly since TV's cost as much as a late-model used Chevy), and with how indulgent your parents are (if I was raising kids now I could put a TV in every room with pocket change, but I sure wouldn't allow a TV in a kid's room).
MarkM makes some good points. Ten years ago, The Millionaire Next Door made similar points. Well worth reading, for those who haven't read it.
Really, if you asked a snipe hunter what a "(blank) over and under" was, don't you think he'd say it was a shotgun? And for that matter, don't you think a bass fisherman might known the names of some common flies?
Or maybe I got both questions wrong.
Unfortunately, it's the latter. C'mon, I went to a Manhattan prep school (where, admittedly, I was the only kid getting pulled out of class to fish Cartwright in October) and even I know that you hunt snipe with a bag and a stick and that you don't (usually) catch bass with little trout flies!
Fred is the worst kind of human it seems to me. The glibertarian idolater. Things are only worthwhile if we can--at some future point--get more material goods.
Education is worthless unless it gets you a job right out of college and is directly related to your field. This whole philosophy rejects all the good our society has obtained from men who studied philosophy. Things like individual rights, democracy, captialism, socialism, and so much more. It is perfect that he has appeared in this thread, slamming those useless intellectuals. His is the kind of blind privilege which has produced so many short sighted and narrow minded Americans lately.
cokane,
I agree that art, literature, poetry, philosophy, theology, music, etc. are important. However, we are asking college students in their late teens to load up with crippling amounts of student loan debt (there was a very good thread on this recently at 11d.typepad.com). As long as higher education costs that much money, you've got to ask if this is the best use of resources. $1,000 buys a lot of Penguin classics.
"Either the writers of this test have no idea of what real poverty is, or they are trying to distinguish upper middle class from the really rich - but that doesn't work because the upper middle class is full of posers spending money they don't have, while many of the really rich live unostentatious middle-class lives."
--markm
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/2008/0107c.html
C'mon, I went to a Manhattan prep school (where, admittedly, I was the only kid getting pulled out of class to fish Cartwright in October) and even I know that you hunt snipe with a bag and a stick and that you don't (usually) catch bass with little trout flies!
Oh, this is cute. The bag/stick thing is a very old practical joke in which the Manhattanite is take out to a swamp for a "snipe hunt" in the middle of the night and then left "holding the bag" (the origin of that expression, BTW) when his "buddies" sneak back to bed. Legitimate snipe hunting is done with a shotgun, like all other bird hunting. Read all about it here.
And while its true that you don't use trout flies for bass, how many bass fisherman are po' boys exclusively out for bass, and don't have any idea what them fancy rich folks are doing with their goofy thin rods and their funny rubber pants? Really, now.
How do you know what is or is not "an uncommon sight among welfare families?
Interesting how Will Barratt's comment has generated only a single (sneeringly dismissive) comment in response. Or maybe merely predictable. Is it so hard to admit that one had a privileged childhood? My parents weren't rolling in dough (far from it) but I had many privileges that many other children did not.
Perhaps it's determining the degree of ones' privilege that is causing all this gnashing of teeth.
Legitimate snipe hunting is done with a shotgun, like all other bird hunting.
I realize that, but given the answer choices and the context, it seems pretty clear that the question referred to the prank, not the real activity. (I guess #8 shot would be a reasonable answer for the latter, though. If you catch snipe with a trotline -- you definitely might be a redneck.)
Incidentally, does Saab make tools, furniture or crackers of which I'm unaware or is that question just out of date?
Freddie wrote: There is no field more beset by meaningless caricature and broad, useless stereotypes than academia. The truth is, the academy, and the humanities, are by many measures healthier and more productive today than they have ever been. But don't let those facts get in the way of your reality-free insults!
The existence of output is not evidence of productivity itself. It may merely mean that society has become rich enough to allow a non-trivial portion of its population to fritter away large swaths of time engaging in frivolous pursuits with no value beyond the amusement of the individuals involved.
This interpretation may conflict sharply with your Noble Savage Theory of academia.
liberalrob wrote: Interesting how Will Barratt's comment has generated only a single (sneeringly dismissive) comment in response. Or maybe merely predictable. Is it so hard to admit that one had a privileged childhood? My parents weren't rolling in dough (far from it) but I had many privileges that many other children did not.
So long as "privilege" is (a) in the eye of the beholder and (b) used to make pissy points against those who are perceived as having it, which usually means anybody better-off than the person making those points, the debate will be contentious.
given the answer choices and the context, it seems pretty clear that the question referred to the prank
OK. Accepting that for a moment and returning to my original question, are the people who pull that sort of prank likely to be able to guess that a "(blank) over and under" is a shotgun, or not? It seems ridiculous to imagine that they wouldn't, which makes these questions a poor way to distinguish one social group from another.
And another question: are the academics who wrote this question aware of the distinction between the prank and the legit activity? Hmmmm...
I believe Saab still makes military aircraft, although why that should be a point of distinction between social classes I'm not entirely sure. Maybe they've brought out a line of luxury business jets. I kinda lost interest in following their every move in the tabloids a while back.
"Fred is the worst kind of human it seems to me."
Cockane,
I hope for your sake you meant this as hyperbole.
To clarify: I am not against the study of literature, philosophy, poetry, etc. I've studied and enjoyed those subjects myself. Their study in a university setting is not worth any parent going in to debt for though. If a student wants to minor in one of these subjects, that's fine, but more often than not, majors in these subjects become the refuge of those who don't have the numeracy or diligence to study more rigorous subjects.
Great English novelists in generations past would have laughed if you told them you majored in English. It's not that they thought it was folly to read great English literature, but it was that this was expected of everyone who was literate and educated.
It amazes me to see the extent to which academics will go to prattle on about unearned rewards (ie., the result of "privilege") and focus solely on environment, ignoring the far greater contribution from genetics. But I guess it is easier to engender manipulable guilt with "privilege" than with genetics.
Here are some more possible questions:
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 the interest of discussion, here's a copy of the response I put up on Scalzi's site:
This exercise is more a work of propaganda than scholarship. The big tip-off is the use of the term “privilege”, which is meant to frame the subject of social class in a certain way in order to generate a certain emotional response. The use of this term has become all the rage among critical theorists and social psychologists since it was discovered that framing the issue of racial inequality as “white privilege” instead of “non-white disadvantage” generated a greater feeling of collective guilt among whites. (See “Inequality as Ingroup Privilege or Outgroup Disadvantage: The Impact of Group Focus on Collective Guilt and Interracial Attitudes” by Powell, Branscombe and Schmitt.)
In discussions of inequality, “privilege” is a heavily loaded term, and its use here is not accidental. The point of this exercise is to instill a sense of collective class-based guilt in those who score “higher”, while generating a sense of class-based resentment among those who score “lower”. The fact that people at both ends feel humiliated, defensive, and angry at the end isn’t an unfortunate side effect — it’s the whole point of the exercise.
It’s agitprop.
And, no. Most of the indicators on the list aren’t particularly useful measures of social class, at least as the concept is understood from a sociological perspective. It’s not that many of the indicators are outdated, it’s that they’re not meant to function as indicators of social class in the first place. (When you get right down to it, a lot of the indicators are fairly trivial markers of wealth.)
They’re really supposed to put a bunch of students closer to one side of the room, and keep a bunch of others closer to their starting point. That’s what they’re calibrated to do and that’s what they do.
Sherman, program the wayback machine for 1987 and let's have 3rd-year University of Kansas sophomore liberalrob take the Amy P privilege exam:
1. Has anyone close to you ever overdosed on drugs?
No.
2. Did you grow up with married parents?
Yes.
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.
9. Did your parents use pay-day loans?
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.
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?
Yes. (My father was a USDA entomologist for 22 years; after he was laid off in 1981 by the Reagan administration as part of their spending cuts, and unable to get another government job due to the recession and Federal hiring freeze, his career never recovered. My mother took up the slack by becoming an elementary school music teacher.)
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.)
Yes. (But not because we didn't have any. My father was very insecure about his lack of income after the 1981 debacle. It led to a lot of strain and many arguments. He's never gotten over his "failure.")
18. Did your family have to deal with social workers?
No.
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? 20 hours a week? 30 hours a week?
Yes. (I worked as a residence hall security monitor and desk clerk to make spending money.)
24. Were your parents able to help you with your homework?
Yes, to a degree (in grade school, not in college).
All in all, looks like I was pretty privileged.
Why not use the same test as the IRS? Did your father work for money or does he have money working for him?
Youngblood, did you read the actual document Scalzi linked to? Here's Barnatt's description of what this exercise is all about:
Is it a double-blind study? No. Are the results going to be published in scholarly journals? No.
You've totally misread the purpose of this test.
Liberalrob: Yes, by Amy's test you were pretty privileged, so were my children even when I was supporting a family of four on military E2 pay (well below the alleged poverty line), and so was I even when Dad started college on the GI bill the same year my baby sister was born and I started kindergarten and we lived in a two-room shack for several years - and so are about 50% of blacks and 80% of whites. But these are some of the real tests of whether parents are doing right by their kids, while the IU test is merely a test of how spoiled parents allowed their kids to become.
Some of my neighbors weren't so "privileged" even though their family income was the same or higher. That's something that was pretty obvious in the service, because these guys had as many or more stripes on their sleeves than me, and the pay scales were public records. It's how they spent their money that made the difference (and sometimes other behavioral flaws, too - criminal convictions really tear up a family emotionally and financially, and Amy's questions don't even begin to cover abusive behavior).
Then there was the successful banker I knew with really screwed up kids - he was never drunk before 5 PM and never sober after 7 PM, and plentiful toys, designer clothes, an expensive boarding school, and new cars for their 16th birthday didn't compensate. My Dad's upbringing was infinitely better in spite of the desperate rural poverty - he received parental love, lessons in morality and self-reliance, strong parental encouragement to make the most of his chances for an education, and all the veggies he could eat out of their garden.
So, Amy's list is a start, but it needs a few additions. I would also add books in the house - it's not a sign of wealth, not even a sign of reaching the poverty line, but it is a sign that the parents value reading and probably also education.
At least it wasn't a calculus class.
I now know where the phrase "give it 110%" came from.
As Youngblood points out, the central aspect of the overall crockiness is the term "privilege." It's undefined, and I suspect if it is defined by Barrett it will turn out to not have much of a relationship to the commonly understood meaning of the term. I notice he's switched to using the term "class" in his message above rather than "privilege".
That, and the questions are based on hopelessly outdated stereotypes. I just looked on Craigslist, and you can get a used 27" color TV for $40. Lack of a TV is more of an indicator of upper class strivers than poverty. It's been that way since probably the early 80's or before. Besides that, what "privilege" does that, or going on a cruise, or a host of other things on the list, confer?
Yes, liberalrob, I did in fact read all three exercises, as well as the other materials on the site.
But did you read what I wrote? I made it fairly clear that the exercise is meant to bring about a change in how class inequality is viewed by instilling a sense of collective guilt in the students participating in the exercise, which contributes to establishing a notion of class based on emotion, not reason.
Now, do you think that if you asked Barratt or the other authors of the exercise what they mean when they say they seek to "raise awareness", how different do you think the answer would be? I'll tell you: it wouldn't be very different at all. Because, in the realm of critical theory, this is basically what it means to "raise awareness". In fact, if you read the article I cited, it is suggested that reframing issues in order to generate a specific emotional response (collective guilt) is a useful tool for raising awareness. That's why it's being used here.
Make no mistake about it: I am in complete and agreement with Barratt (et al) about the intended goal of the exercise. We're on the same page there. At the same, I happen to know a little more about how the exercise achieves that goal, and I happen to believe that *how* is as important as *why* in this case.
And here I thought "the intent is awareness and the audience is staff development in residence halls." But it's really a sneaky Maoist indoctrination programme based on instilling "collective guilt." How devious!
First I have Rob Lyman telling me that the participants are going to just go through the motions because they could care less about a "staff development exercise" and then I have you telling me it's all a Commie plot. Hey, let's just not have staff development exercises, let cliques form in college dorms just like they do in high schools, and not even try to broaden people's perspectives. That's not what college is for.
let cliques form in college dorms
Ok, two things:
1) "let"? What makes you think they need or care about your permission? What makes you think the cliques aren't already fully formed?
2) If your goal is to broaden horizons by exposing people to the reality of their own privilege, then 4 months in a real blue-collar factory job will be better than 4 years of college, even if that's 4 years of nothing but staff development exercises. Like I said, the real Maoists had it right.
Accepting that for a moment and returning to my original question, are the people who pull that sort of prank likely to be able to guess that a "(blank) over and under" is a shotgun, or not? It seems ridiculous to imagine that they wouldn't, which makes these questions a poor way to distinguish one social group from another.
Absolutely, I'd imagine that the redneck contingent would be far more likely to recognize "over and under" as a shotgun than the preppies to recognize the Purdy brand. I wasn't intending to suggest that that quiz, particularly the blue side, isn't inane and insulting -- it reads like he came up with it while watching Titanic or reading Stover at Yale.
"Hey, let's just not have staff development exercises, let cliques form in college dorms just like they do in high schools, and not even try to broaden people's perspectives. That's not what college is for."
Do we really think that this kind of guilt-inducing exercise is helpful in forming friendships between people of different social backgrounds? We make friends with people we feel we have something in common with, not those people who we have been made to feel alienated from.
I don't know about other people, but one of the more enjoyable aspects of college for me was the way that it minimized background. Unless I was very good friends with someone, I had no idea if they had an abusive alcoholic father, if they'd come from a poor Mormon family with seven kids, or if their parents lived in a BIG house in Orange County. In the initial phase of getting acquainted, those social facts are invisible. If I introduced you to those three college friends of mine, you wouldn't know which was which. The college environment allows you to escape from your past and reinvent yourself, and you only need to share gory details with people that you trust. (In fact, when I was in college, a non-student was discovered to have been hanging out on campus pretending to be Magic Johnson's nephew.)
I don't know what your experience of university residence hall life was, but for me as the only Louisianian in Templin Hall in 1984, there was no natural clique for me to belong to. I had to meet people (starting with my new roommate and the floor's Resident Assistant) and form new friendships with absolutely no knowledge of these people's backgrounds on day 1. The point (if I may venture my own analysis) of training staff to be aware of class differences and snobbishness is not only to make them aware of their OWN prejudices and behaviors if they have them, but to prepare them to recognize and have some idea of how to address those prejudices in others BEFORE THEY CAUSE PROBLEMS in the residence hall. Now maybe it's most likely that anyone predisposed to be that kind of snob is already going to be self-segregated (into a fraternity/sorority, for example) and not be a concern; but just in case, it seems useful to me to try to prepare staff to deal with the people who might show up and try to lord it over the others.
Indisputably true, and in my own case I'm sure I would have benefitted from a year or two in the work force between high school and college. But that's not current practice, so we have to do what we can with the situation as it is.
Gah, I've had it up to hear with this "guilt-inducing exercise" BS. It. Is. Not. Guilt-inducing! Not, not, not! Why would anyone feel guilty because of this exercise? I don't see it. After 80 posts about how horrible this exercise is, I still don't see it. It's about awareness, empathy and accommodation. These may be Maoist pinko squishy liberal values, but I think they're worthwhile to cultivate.
I'm so upset, I can't even spell "here"!
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
Will, I'm not totally clear on who did this exercise or under what circumstances. Was this (as liberalrob suggests) about training RAs, or was this something that students themselves participated in? Because my reaction is very different in the two cases. If only staff did it as preparation for their work as RAs, then it seems to me much more worthwhile for the reasons liberalrob outlines, even though I agree with many (most? all?) of the criticisms of your particular choice of questions.
But if this was something students were participating in, then read on:
I don't know what your experience of university residence hall life was, but for me as the only Louisianian in Templin Hall in 1984, there was no natural clique for me to belong to. I had to meet people (starting with my new roommate and the floor's Resident Assistant) and form new friendships with absolutely no knowledge of these people's backgrounds on day 1
OK, so how would having to answer a bunch of semi-personal questions about your relative level of wealth and "spoiledness" have improved this situation? Weren't you better off getting to know people based on, you know, themselves, rather than on what sort of vactions they took as children? As Amy P points out, the change to meet people in a classless and agenda-free environment is probably far better for students than the chance to have a stilted and awkward discussion based on the number of books in their home or their vacation experiences.
The "chance" to meet people...
I don't buy Will Barratt's statement that anger was not an intended outcome of the exercise. From his web page describing the test, here:
http://wbarratt.indstate.edu/socialclass/step_into_social_class_2.htm
[quote]
What were the feelings that you had during this experience? Who was angry?
(Anger will be a primary emotion at this point.)
What, specifically, makes you angry?
Who are you angry at?
Who was happy?
Which item do you want to argue about most? Why? Do you want more or fewer steps?
[/quote]
If you can't provide even an approximate definition of what "privilege" means, why are you using the term? Students have a pre-existing understanding of the term, and it doesn't seem to match up with what you claim to be measuring. You could easily use some innocuous and anodyne term instead.
Since Dr Barratt is here, and people have been wondering: what went into determining the "privilege walk" questions? Were they based on research? Knocking back a few brews in the presence of a word processor? Why were those particular questions included?
Anger - Designing something to induce anger is one thing and understanding that something we designed induced anger and guilt and other feelings is something else. If we had wanted to anger people the experience would have been quite different. We recognized early that a common response was anger and defensiveness, and adjusted the discussion questions accordingly. See Milton Bennett's work on intercultural sensitivity, especially on denial and defensiveness.
Origins of the items - We drew from published literature on class and privilege confirmed with our own interviews and piloted the statements with students on our and other campuses. The statements reflect a capital idea of class (economic, cultural, social, (Bourdieu) and academic given our context). We did not use our personal experiences as a source. The statements are intended to be about things that were provided to the people in the experience and were not about those individuals' efforts. See Zweig, Sennett and Cobb, Fussell, The New York Times on class as well as the National Center for Educational Statistics and the Census Bureau.
Defining privilege and class - There are multiple definitions of privilege and class within and between disciplines. Part of the experience is for participants to see privilege from multiple perspectives. If you have a clear definition of privilege that works for all peoples in all settings I would enjoy reading it and reading peoples' responses to it here. See Peggy McIntosh's Knapsack article for an interesting look at white privilege.
Who is this for - we have used it for RA training, staff training, at conferences to enable others to use this, and with student groups. It works less well with people over 30 because of the items that reflect contemporary privileges like cell phones. There are multiple ways to design experiences and workshops - this works for us in our context, and your way may work for you in your context.
I appreciate everyone's comments and this discussion.
I am highly unconvinced that you just happened to design an exercise that induced anger. Quite obviously you borrowed from the earlier work, and were aware of the response that this provoked when used in that context. The language and questions were designed to provoke a similar response here. Are you really claiming that the student response was surprising to you, given the language and examples used?
If there are "multiple definitions of class and privilege" it would seem to be your duty as an academic to define what you mean by that in this context. Why should we have to guess at what your meaning is, or what particular definition you chose to use? In the paragraphs above, in what sense are you using the term "privilege?" Since you wrote the paragraphs, you presumably had a meaning in mind and used the term in order to communicate that meaning.
You claim elsewhere on your web pages that "we don't have a language" to talk about class on campus, and "developing a language to talk about class is the first step along the path to awareness." So why choose the term "privilege?" It's quite straightforward to choose another term without the emotional baggage. Say, "socioeconomic indicators" or some such. This would also have the non-trivial benefit of allowing you to develop the language you find lacking.
Or you could try taking the reverse course--use a term loaded in the other direction, such as "envy indicators." That would let you analyze anger from another direction.