Privileges Meme

[trickykitty]

From What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege 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, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.

Bold what's true for you. (I've also used underline for those I'm not considering true but still have comments towards. Other comments are after the bold statements.)

1. Father went to college (he studied sociology and realized there's no money in it and that he could make more money working for the Post Office)

2. Father finished college

3. Mother went to college (mom attended typing and shorthand classes, but not as part of a degree, which I think is the point here)

4. Mother finished college

5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor. (when I graduate from uni I will be the first person in my family to ever do so)

6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers. (I'm assuming this means the teachers were middle working class and so is my family)

7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.

8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home. (does going to the library once a week every week count?)

9. Were read children's books by a parent. (briefly until I learned to read in pre-kindergarten, then I read my own books while mom read hers, but it was still a "family reading time")

10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18.
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18. (swimming, bowling, roller skating, ice skating, tennis, piano, bassoon, gymnastics, cake/cookie decorating, beauty school, and 1 month of karate when I was 19 - all were lessons that were paid for or, in the case of gymnastics and skating, part of my pre- and after-school childcare curriculum - my parents have always encouraged me in all of my hobbies)

12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively. (not sure, I've always considered myself average, and "plain" usually isn't portrayed positively or negatively)

13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18. (no, but I had a checking account given to me as a graduation gift from my grandparents at the age of 17 - I still don't have a true credit card)

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 (this was only because my mom worked for the YMCA and received half off the cost)

18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18. (I never needed one, but I'm sure if it was required I would have had one - I'm only counting actual tutoring, not private music lessons, et al)

19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels. (we took one vacation to Colorado by car when I was 6 and my mom was pregnant with my sister and we stayed in a log cabin; the next one to Vegas when I was 17 was postponed due to me being in a horrible car wreck the night before we were supposed to get on the plane - it was postponed until I was 27 and we stayed at the Stratosphere)

20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18. (by the time junior high hit, some friends and I would go through clothes that the other was giving away, but otherwise my clothes were consistently new; my sister got a mixture of new, hand-me-down, and stolen-from-big-sis's-closet)

21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them. (my first car was a used car that they co-signed for - they believed in us girls having good credit - my mom payed for half the car payment and half the insurance until I was old enough to get a real job and it not affect my school work)

22. There was original art in your house when you were a child. (2 landscape paintings that I always forget about, but nothing name recognizable by any means - they are still on the walls 30 years later; and my mom cross-stitched and needle-pointed other wall hangings)

23. You and your family lived in a single-family house. (again, the value of good credit and ownership runs through my family)

24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home. (they keep re-mortgaging and borrowing on the equity, so technically no, but it would have been)

25. You had your own room as a child.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18. (my sister and I both went through the "teen on the phone for many hours every night" phases - they felt that a second line was not worth the money, but they did buy call waiting when it became available so that they wouldn't miss a call)

27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course. (it was part of the school curriculum - welcome to Texas and the every-FUCKING-year standardized testing phenomenon)

28. Had your own TV in your room in high school. (I'll say yes by default - there were four TVs in our house, one of which was in my sister's room, and four family members - not to mention I always had a state-of-the-art computer from the time I was in elementary school, which I preferred over getting a tv in my room since I already controlled the remote to the one in the living room)

29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.

30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16. (nope [see vacation info above], but I did attend flight school and learned how to fly a Cessna before I ever got on a commercial airplane)

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. (two in particular - FTW museum of science and history, including the Omni and planetarium - and the FTW zoo, which I'll count as a "cultural event" for a child - there were so many other places as I was imbued with the historical value of the Fort Worth area while growing up, including seeing old houses and going to the Stock Yards, Six Flags and State Fair practically every year - my parents have never been into fine art, fine dining or sporting events, so we kept to the more traditional, educational, rustic, earth-bound culture)

34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family. (my parents never discussed their personal finances with us while growing up, but instead made us learn about finances through our own spending habits - now I discuss family finances with my mom all the time)


This was a great trip down memory lane. Regarding the true meaning of the meme, it only reinforces what I learned as a young girl coming to terms with class and privilege: my family is the typical middle-working class who has nice things that they have worked really hard for. I was taught the value of a dollar and the value of a hundred and a thousand dollars simultaneously (although if someone would like to teach me the value of a million dollars I'm all yours). If there is one thing that I give full and complete credit to my parents for it is the time and effort that they have spent on raising my sister and I. We were never pushed into something that we weren't interested and our hobbies were always encouraged with care and good counsel.