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Originally Posted by JinnKai
This is actually a very good question, and a pretty good demonstrator of the "unearned privilege" that people talk about. Two years ago, before meeting my current girlfriend, I would've dismissed this list as a pandering excuse for poor people and women to complain about how bad their lives were. Now I see it as a very serious indictment of privilege in America.
And actually, despite my answers being nearly identical to yours, spinelust, I must admit that because of my "media" answer, and the fact that I'm a straight white male, my 'unearned privilege' is much greater than yours. I've become more and more aware of how media really shapes 'privilege.' I don't think these questions are all equal, and certain answers weight much more strongly on the end result.
In college I remember doing a similar exercise, but you all lined up and stepped back if No, forward if Yes. It was really sobering at the end to see the physical distance between members of the same class, and this was in a college. Random people off the street would've been far more disparate.
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Originally Posted by JinnKai
So it turns out this thread was kinda boring, because almost everyone just replied mySpace-quiz style, and didn't actually add anything interesting to their posts.
I keep coming back hoping for something unique to read, but ... alas, no.
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Maybe here is where the discussion can begin?
I'm familiar with the exercise you've spoken of, and it has been illuminating every time I have seen it, especially when we did it in an environment (my high school) where so many people had grown up with one another and assumed they knew everything about each other.
What struck me the most as I typed out my responses to these questions was knowing where my own parents had come from and how much they have achieved given their humble beginnings, my mom especially. She was raised in a family of six siblings in the projects on the lower East Side of Manhattan and put herself through night college to become first a nurse and then a doctor. I am certain that their own experiences shaped their desires for my sister and me to have every possible opportunity for a comfortable life, but I wonder about their own feelings and whether they ever look back and think about what they've accomplished in their lifetime.
I also wonder about my dad's experience, given that he is white/Caribbean/Latino, and the challenges he may have faced as a result. I wonder about whether my parents worried that a disparity would grow between myself and my sister, given that she has darker skin like my dad's and mine is lighter like my mom's. I have heard stories of my dad's father and uncle, the former being lighter skinned and favored by their mother and the latter being darker skinned and rejected by her. I wonder how my dad has felt about that over time.
It would be at this point that I would start up a conversation with my parents to get a sense of what they think about it, but this has yet to happen.
Of course there are challenges present nowadays, even among the super-privileged, that couldn't have been predicted. What comes to my mind immediately is the cutthroat competitiveness among parents to get their toddlers accepted into top-notch private nursery school programs. That's not something I am faced with right now and it's difficult for me to relate to; as a result, it seems almost ridiculous to me (I mean, come on... nursery school?!), especially when compared to the challenges faced by the underprivileged. Odds are I'd feel differently if I were in that situation myself.