privilege meme

In Team Liberation, a student-run facilitation group on OSU’s campus, they often do an even during facilitations in order to prompt discussions about privilege. When it’s nice outside, it’s run in the form of a race. Everyone stands lined up holding hands, and then the facilitators make statements, adding “take a step forward” or “take a step backward” depending on the statement. E.G., “If you had more than 50 books in your home as a child, take a step forward.” Generally, these statements make visible issues of privilege in regards to gender, race, socio-economic class, ability, and sexuality.

After a few statements, participants can no longer hold hands, and their bonds break. At the end, participants are spread out across a field, some very far ahead, and some very far behind. They are then told to race to the finish line.

What I like about this meme from Meagan is that it does something very similar: highlights privileges based on socio-economic class. I’ll go ahead and post it below, with my answers:

Privilege meme: Bold the items that apply to you.

1. Father went to college (Community College)
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college (Community College)
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
9. Were read children’s books by a parent
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
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
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 (one week of church camp for three summers)
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
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
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 (After I was 14 or 15)
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18
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

EDIT: I’d like to acknowledge the developers of this meme: Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, and Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. Thanks to my commenter for alerting me to this.

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6 Responses to privilege meme

  1. Anon says:

    Because I hope to use this in a class, I searched up the cite and will share it here. It may be helpful to you.

    This exercise was developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. The exercise developers ask that if you participate in this blog game, you acknowledge their copyright.

  2. Michael says:

    Thanks! I’ll post the citation in my post!

  3. Calapooia Tonic says:

    I grew up rural poor. I score only six of the thirty four items.

    Today I have a six figure household income and children who want for nothing, especially opportunity. I guess that I am some sort of low key success story. I work in a professional environment where I have a lot of responsibility and even some notoriety in my field.

    The thing is, I knew that my experience was way different than what I saw in the media but it did not matter all that much to me. I was always taught that if I stood up on my hind legs and moved forward, I could do anything, go anywhere.

    I grew up on the West speaking very standard English. When I took the SAT I got a great score not because I was well prepared in school, but because I just went with what sounded right to me. Reading and writing came easily to me. I was accepted to a foreign exchange program and there learned that a huge world was ahead of me as soon as my little rural home was in my rear view mirror. These were my advantages.

    I look at people of color and at more recent immigrant families and I know that given even more advantage in upbringing than me, they have good reason to doubt that the world will treat them fairly. This lack of confidence, I believe, is the single most important difference between me and people who are class bound.

    How can we give the confidence advantage to children? One place to start is to teach them to own their own experience, to learn for themselves, and to understand that life does not just happen to them. Articulate the difference between an internal locus of control and external.

    Even in this seemingly advanced age, our kids are still rumbling along in a behaviorist, industrial model of education. Given the access to information and communications there is no excuse for this any more. We need to put a name to these classist practices and then put a stop to them.

  4. sara jameson says:

    This will be fun to do, but it is maybe a bit dated for those of us older. For example, I don’t think that SAT prep classes had been invented when I was in high school. I guess the “lessons” in questions 10 & 11 mean like piano lessons? Yes, briefly, but I was no good!

  5. Will Barratt says:

    Here is the link for the original original http://wbarratt.indstate.edu/socialclass/social_class_on_campus.htm and the first internet version http://quakerclass.blogspot.com/

    This is simply an awareness exercise, and seems to generate anger and denial among those who get more points.

    Will

  6. Michael says:

    Calapooia Tonic, I’ve just now made time to reply to your comment, because I’ve had a busy week and I wanted to consider the implications of what you wrote before responding.

    I agree with you that current models of education are often dangerous, especially to those who have the least advantages in our society.

    However, I find it hard to agree with your statement, “This lack of confidence, I believe, is the single most important difference between me and people who are class bound.”

    I don’t mean for my disagreement to sound like I know your background; I in fact do not. What I do want to point out, though, is that by focusing the conversation on confidence, we do two things: 1) we privatize the discourse so that instead of talking about societal problems, we instead talk about blaming those without advantage for not being confident enough, and 2) by ignoring those social problems, we don’t focus on the changes that we can be making in society.

    I think there are a lot of factors other than confidence that can keep an individual or family from succeeding and advancing, including but definitely not limited to:

    • lack in housing and employment opportunities based on where one lives or the color of one’s skin;

    • the double bind of needing to work in order to raise children but not being able to afford childcare if one does work;

    • speaking dialects or learning English so that answers on standardized tests, which studies have shown to be culturally biased, cannot be intuited based on one’s understanding of language, on what “sounds right”;

    • working in conditions that are actually harmful to one’s health and yet not having adequate health coverage;

    • loyalty to one’s family and the fears of leaving them and your neighborhood behind in order to “improve” oneself (yes, those are definitely scare quotes);

    and a wide world more. My point is that “confidence” is not the single most important (and perhaps it is barely even important) factor in determining whether someone can climb the class ladder or not.

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