The social privilege meme

[xiphias]

So, a Quaker thinking about social class wrote up a set of "how privileged was your upbringing" questions, and made it into a meme. She based it on an exercise by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University, who ask that their copyright be acknowledged by anyone doing this meme.

This is based on North American/United States upbringings, as has been clear around my friends lists, from people whose upbringings are disjoint from the kinds of upbringings this meme thinks about; but, it should be interesting. Those things which are true of me, I will put in bold type.

• Father went to college
  
• Father finished college
  
• Mother went to college
  
• Mother finished college (Although that was partially by her choice)
  
• Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor (Yup -- dentists, lawyers. You have to get to my mother's cousins before you hit professors, but they were there, too.)
  
• Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers (Heck, I was related to at least one of them)
  
• Had more than 50 books in your childhood home (I PERSONALLY owned more than fifty books)
  
• 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 (Violin, dance, karate, guitar, singing . . . )
  
• 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 (We considered it, but our local public high school was frankly a better school.)
  
• Went to summer camp
  
• Had a private tutor before you turned 18 (My junior high school experience was . . . weird. But, yes, I get this one.)
  
• 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
  
• There was original art in your house when you were a child (Mostly from friends who were professional artists, including photographers.)
  
• Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
  
• You and your family lived in a single family house (They bought the single-family the year I left for college)
  
• Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home (They co-owned it with our downstairs neighbor at the time, who is still a good friend, and actually on my friends list)
  
• You had your own room as a child
  
• Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course (We thought about it, but I didn't need it.)
  
• Had your own TV in your room in High School
  
• Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College (I don't THINK I did -- but I did have investments, like Israel bonds and the like, that family bought for me)
  
• Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
  
• Went on a cruise with your family (No, but we did once go to a Caribbean island for Passover)
  
• 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
  

It's also important to note that the few things on that list which I DIDN'T do were largely by my family's choice, rather than because we lacked the means. We could have afforded a phone in my room, or a television. At the time I grew up, children didn't normally have credit cards, and, if they did, my parents would probably not have chosen to give me one. But we would have been able to.

Growing up, I never missed a meal. Now, we DID go through different economic classes at times -- but for MOST of my childhood, our family was comfortably well-off. And even the leaner times weren't THAT lean.

Comments

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

My childhood was varied enough economically that, while I could answer a lot of these in the affirmative for some part of it, I could also answer them in the negative for some of it. There were times when I had my own room with a phone and a TV; there were also times when I damn well had to notice how much the heating bill was and I slept on the couch in the living room of a one-bedroom apartment. The educational components were always there, because they were what my parents chose to put their money into even when they didn't have much -- and that in itself makes me privileged, both because they made that choice and had the education themselves to know how to do it and because they had at least some small amount of extra money to do that with. Whether or not they had enough money to also give me, or themselves, perks depended on whether they were working for the city or for private industry that year.