What Privilege Do You Have?
I saw a blog game on a couple of Quaker blogs (this one and this one), so I thought I’d offer a similar game with a spin on class based. It’s based on an exercise developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Indiana State University that I found on this Yahoo group around class on college campuses. The exercise developers hold the copyright but have given me permission to post it here and ask that if you participate in this blog game, you acknowledge their copyright.
If you post this in your blog, please leave a comment on this website: Social Class & Quakers.
Father went to college
Father finished college
Mother went to college (my mom JUST got her AA last month!)
Mother finished college
Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
Were read children’s books by a parent
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs*
Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs*
Went to a private high school
Went to summer camp (once, when i was around 11 y/o i went to camp with my softball team mates for two weeks)
Had a private tutor before you turned 18
Family vacations involved staying at hotels
Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them ($800, 1972, ford futra)
There was original art in your house when you were a child
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
You and your family lived in a single family house
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home (my parents bought their first home when i was 10 or 11 y/o)
You had your own room as a child (i was an only child. however, there was a time when it was just mom and i and we shared a room).
Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
Had your own TV in your room in High School
Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16 (once, when i was 15, i visited an aunt in NY)
Went on a cruise with your family
Went on more than one cruise with your family
Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family
*These two are edited because Christine pointed out that the previous wording didn’t clearly delineate between people who had their tuition paid for them and people who worked for their college expenses.
In the group exercise which was originally designed for college students, staff and faculty, everyone stands in a line and steps forward if any of these things are true for them.
If we were all in a big room, I would have taken ten steps forward. How about you? How many would you have taken? How many steps will your kids have taken by the time they’re 18 (or how many did they take before they turned 18)?
Notice that each of these are things that were given to you or provided for you rather than things you necessarily earned yourself. The exercise instructions note that just because you’ve taken a lot of steps doesn’t mean that you haven’t worked hard to get where you are. But perhaps consider the things you’ve had handed to you that others didn’t have.
To participate in this blog game, copy and paste the above list into your blog, and bold the items that are true for you. If you don’t have a blog, feel free to post your responses in the comments. Once enough people participate in this little game, I’ll do a Part II post about what all this has to do with Friends. (And you can, in your blog post, ponder what it means to Friends).
Thank you if you read all that!
The bolded answers are my own. I cut and paste this from Social Class & Quakers.
My other blog, My Relationship With Money, is open to read if you so desire.
I have more to talk about regarding class and privlege but I’ll save it for later, and probably for the other blog.
