Privilege Meme: One question

[melissajm]

By now I'm sure most of the world has seen the meme that starts like this:
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 the true statements.

I've been thinking about it a lot, getting vaguely annoyed, and wanting to respond but not knowing how. So I'm going to zero on one question:

12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.

What ARE "people like me?"
The kids i went to high school with- mostly white residents of "a nice neighborhood?"
The kids I went to camp with-all with our various disabilities, some living in "special residences?"
The people I hang out with at cons-from every niche of life, united by an appreciation of words and wit?
My farmer relatives? My relatives who belong to a yacht Club?
My friends who are still living on SSI, as I once was?
The fellow college student that I wanted to sock for saying "Of course you'll get into grad school! You're female and handicapped!"

YES, I'm privileged, by golly. I'm privileged to have grown up in a loving family who kept me materially comfortable but didn't let me get away with being a snotty brat, and encouraged me to develop my mind. I'm privileged to know all sorts of people, and to have had it brought home to me that "like me" isn't the only "right" way to be-or a wrong way either. I'm privileged to have a husband who loves me for what's in my heart and head, not for the car in our driveway, the clothes in our closets, or whatever. And I'm grateful for all of it.

Comments

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

It's a very limited questionnaire....and I didn't do it becasue I found it a bit offensive. Not really offensive to me as to people in general. I don't really consider that privilege is defined by having a TV in your room.

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

It reminds me of a study I read about in grad school. It was done on the unusually high number of persons with visible "deformities" who were diagnosed as Paranoid, and the ditto number of hearing impaired people diagnosed as Schizophrenic.

Come to find out, their diagnoses were based on answers to questions on the same instrument.

The people doing the studies went over the instrument with a fine-toothed comb, and pinpointed two questions as likely culprits:

"When I go out in public, I often feel like people are staring at me."
well, yes, I have to admit, that's true. for some reason.

and
"I sometimes hear voices."
Yes. Usually I don't, but in the right conditions, I can.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

One of the things you learn in Statistics is the difference between a well-designed instrument (meaning survey or poll) and a poorly-designed one. The bad ones give lousy results, which un-informed people have a distressing tendency to take at face value....

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

My parents didn't think that kids should have TVs in their rooms because it was more important to spend time together. I think that's a bigger privilege.

They also taught me to think of "privilege" as gifts given with the unspoken understanding that now I had a chance to pay it forward.

I don't know if I live up to it very often, but the thought is there.

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

I'm still trying to work out why having an uncle who was a university professor makes ME privileged. It's not like it rubs off!

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

No, only in Xanth do you automatically know everything that your relatives know.

As far as the instruments, I learned a lot about it when I did questions for the Texas 7th grade Achievement tests. (Which J must've taken, though not any I wrote.) I learned even more in grad school when I took a class in assessment and testing.