Privilege

I think a lot of these questions reveal that the devil is in the details, but it sounded like fun.

Based on an exercise 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, PLEASE acknowledge their copyright. BOLD WHICH APPLY TO YOU:

Father went to college  

Father finished college  Earned a degree in a foreign country that only partly 'counted.'

Mother went to college

Mother finished college  Earned a degree in a foreign country that only partly 'counted.'

Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor

Were the same or higher socio-economic class than your high school teachers  For most, but not all of my life.

Had more than 50 books in your childhood home  Later on.  Not for a long time.

Had more than 500 books in your childhood home (Detail--my parents left their native country with me and a suitcase.  The country they landed in didn't have any books in their native language.  Hence, we had what they'd packed in children's books, what relatives sent to us, and a few books in English.)

Were read children's books by a parent  Here's a question that puzzles me.  Yes, it's a privilege to have good parents, but from the culture it has little to do with socio-economic standing.  It was expected, whether you were raised by dirt-poor farmers or someone very wealthy.  Then came the schism, where the 'noble' or old families had nannies do that, though that was still considered bad parenting and a sign of being spoiled (the parents, not the kids.)  The whole image of under-privileged children living in squalor hadn't permeated Czech home life.  No matter how bad things got, you kept the house clean and the children washed.  If the kids had no shoes, you made them some.  Penniless households had art on the walls and flowers on the table.  I'm sure this is more utopian than reality in some ways, but I have to say that when I visited the home country it was clean, and the only things that were gray and grim and squalid were what the Soviets had built.  Even there, inside the cinderblock apartments, people might have few possessions but they were kept in a loving fashion.  Maybe being Czech should be listed as a privilege?

Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18

Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18 (gymnastics, swimming, sports, music--usually through community recreational programs, school or at home)

The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively  With the caveat that almost no one was Czech in media, but as I'm white and during school became English speaking, this one ends up bolded.

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

Had a private tutor before you turned 18  (My parents tutored me.  I knew how to read and write to a certain extent before I ever went into kindergarten, though not in English.)

Family vacations involved staying at hotels (big time campers.  Sometimes we'd rent a house with my great aunt and great uncle or with friends of the family, split costs.)

Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18 (eldest child, no nearby relatives except great aunt and great uncle)

Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them

There was original art in your house when you were a child.  My parents painted the vast majority of art in our home.

You and your family lived in a single family house

Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home

You had your own room as a child (for a short time my sister and I shared a room in my great aunt's townhouse.)

You had a phone in your room before you turned 18

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  To get to the U.S. we flew.  I'm not sure how that was paid for.

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  Of course!  My father was an artist as well as an engineer.  Even when we could afford very little we budgeted for this.  Another devil in the details, much like being read to by a parent.  It points at privilege of good parenting, which at least in the Eastern European culture I was raised in knows no class.  Didn't matter if your house had a dirt floor and you ate little more than potatoes.  You went to the museum at least once.

You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family  Never the amount, but sometimes the grinding of teeth could be heard from a good distance.  Does that count?

Maybe growing up in privilege blinds me to some of the stuff this is pointing at, and I'm sure I have a skewed perspective on my childhood.  It definitely measures a society more American than I am, despite the fact that I am an American--raised and educated in America in a primarily English-speaking household.

We started with nothing.  My father worked for a Chinese newspaper when we moved in with my great aunt and great uncle in their townhouse in Pacifica (Bay Area)--he spoke neither English nor Chinese.  We grew from that to owning our own home, my father making a handsome living as an engineer, but even then he saved up to buy things, including things that would only take maybe a half day of work of his wages.  What privilege is being measured?  Being born into a good, hard-working family which can be found even among the generationally poor, or being born into a financially independent circumstance?  It's apples and oranges in my mind.  You can be born to both and neither, either, or.

For the record, I have a much nicer house than most of my relatives, and my husband earns almost as much as my father did when he worked in San Jose (adjusted dollars.)  I think my kids are less privileged familially than I was, because I'm not as attentive to them and the house as my mother was.  Does that mean that despite my upbringing and family ideals, I fit in with whatever this quiz is trying to measure somehow?  If we made more money, had more savings, would I read more to my kids, take them to more lessons, have more books in the house (although the idea of more books in this house is rather frightening and yet intriguing)?  If I'd completed college would it be more likely that we would have planned to support the kids through college?  I'd like to see what this exercise shows and teaches us.  I do very much like that it makes me think about these things.