Unspoken assumptions

[jhetley]

I've seen several iterations of a "Privilege" question list circulating on LJ.  Portions of it bug me.  "Privilege" is a swear-word in many parts of our multi-cultural diversity.  Therefore I should be ashamed of growing up with parents who read books to me?  Who had books in the house?  Who valued education enough to scrimp and scrounge the cash and send me to a military academy for a year when it looked like public schools would shut down in our state, over integration?

A lot of the other unspoken assumptions are very specific to urban and modern situations, rather than the South Dakota sod shanty my father grew up in...

Comments

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Some of it bothers me too. It's missing a few questions. It addresses privilege very narrowly.

I can't help feeling that having a poor and less literate family that supports you and loves you is a kind of privilege, and gives you a good head start in life too. Sure, I had my own room...spent a lot of time cowering in it while my college educated father raged and screamed and beat on me.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

College education has to be a mixed blessing -- my mother and one of my grandmothers were both teachers. This meant they had college degrees. This also meant they were underpaid working mothers. In my grandmother's case, an underpaid working mother raising three children in the early 1900s with an absent father.

A strange definition of privilege.

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

Lists like that are not designed to be arguable-with; they're designed to be springboards for discussion . . . but all too often the "discussion" veers into territory where taking issue with one or more of the items on the list will get you told off for being so thoroughly immersed in the problem that you can't even recognize its existence.

I generally just bite my tongue and back away quietly. Merely because something is an invitation to a train wreck doesn't mean I have to buy a ticket.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Not ashamed, but aware. Awareness of the inequality of opportunity is the first step toward correcting it. What if you hadn't had those things, as some people in your area most likely did not? How would that have been likely to affect the remainder of your life?

At least part of the reason this particular version focuses on modern/urban settings is that it's designed to look at class privilege. Someone living in a South Dakota sod shanty is part of the unprivileged class by any reasonable standard.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

You don't think "privilege" was intended as an insult in this context?

Inequality of opportunity is a fact of the universe. I can name a great number of good things that I will never do, lacking the physical or mental or financial equipment required. This cannot be corrected.

One example item on that list -- books in the house. Our family always had books, but the number of books we _owned_ represented a minuscule fraction of the books I read. Still does. Free libraries.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I think people get their backs up at being "accused" of privilege, because they *think* it's an insult.

But starcat_jewel has it right: Privilege isn't something to apologize for or feel bad about, it's something to be *aware* of. Much privilege comes to us by virtue of who we are, not what we do (although it can, as the quiz in question points out, result from something our parents or forebears did).

I'm privileged, among other things, by virtue of having been born white, in a First-World nation, growing up with indoor plumbing and potable water and having a college education. I apologize for none of that, but I'm aware that most people in the world don't share those privileges, and that - except possible for the education part - I did nothing to "earn" or "deserve" them.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I certainly have seen the word used as an insult. In some circles, "privilege" is only spoken with a sneer.

[kk1raven.livejournal.com]

I havent't seen the question list involved, but I'd use the word "advantage" rather than "privilege" for things like having parents that cared. "Privilege" in that context implies getting something that isn't deserved and everyone deserves tto have books and good parents and a decent education.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

The precise word "privilege" is the major part of my quibble with the whole thing. "White Male Privilege" stirs up all sorts of stink. Some of it gets into "le droit du siegneur" territory, feudal. It isn't just getting something that isn't deserved. It's getting something that no one ought to have, for whatever the complainer's particular value of "ought" might be.