Privilege Again
As I was replying to the comments left overnight, I realized that it is very likely that the original authors of the class privilege index were inspired by the essay White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, by Peggy McIntosh. I think part of my desire to fix the meme is that I found the White Privilege essay so thought-provoking when I read it as a freshman in college. It is, of course, flawed in some of what it asserts: being white is absolutely no guarantee of being able to live in a safe, affordable neighborhood. But when I read it at 18, I was...startled, I guess, by many of the privileges I had to admit that I had taken for granted and never thought about, as a white teenager. (#24: I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race. It's rather less true for me now, living in Minneapolis in 2008, but as a white teenager in Madison, Wisconsin in the 1980s, it was true pretty close to 100% of the time.)
In my college class, at least, it was a starting point of discussion, rather than Received Truth, which IMO is the proper use for something like this (as fodder for discussion, not as Holy Writ). I'm guessing that the people who wrote the privilege piece used it to start a similar discussion about the privileges of wealth and class in the U.S. It's a conversation worth having. I actually think that the fact that something like 95% of Americans consider themselves "middle class" is a good thing, but it can also paper over some of the really stark disadvantages that you start out with if you come from a household where your parents can't afford to take you to the dentist.
One fundamental problem here is that "privilege" is an extremely loaded term. When I use the term "privilege" with my kids, I mean, "something I can legitimately take away from you if you really piss me off." Dessert is a privilege; dinner is a human right. Art class is a privilege; school is a human right. And so on. But in an essay like McIntosh's, it's a word that's used to describe a mix of things that should be true for everyone ("I am never asked to speak for all the people in my racial group") with a few things that really shouldn't be true for anyone ("I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.") The original privilege meme included mostly things that were definitely optional. (Like getting a car -- a new car, no less! -- from your parents.) But since it was focused mostly on the optional, it blew right past just how bad poverty can be even in the U.S. And that's unfortunate, because there have been Presidents who apparently believed that no one in the U.S. actually went hungry. Despite the fact that at my daughter's school, they send a note home each November and May to request donations of grocery store gift cards for families at the school who will have trouble feeding their children during the vacation.
Poverty in the U.S. can be weirdly invisible, and in Minnesota, where conspicuous consumption is at least supposed to be covered with a thin veneer of practicality, wealth and privilege can also be weirdly invisible. There are good things about this, but the downside is that you're unlikely to fix an injustice you've never noticed. So I do think exercises like this can be useful. But I'm not sure this exercise is particularly useful.
Edited to add something that was part of my original thought, but got lost as I was writing (I hate it when that happens):
Part of the problem with the meme and with discussions of this issue is that "privilege" means several different things, depending on the context.
1. A luxury that not everyone has, but that's basically OK as it's optional.
2. A luxury that not everyone has, and that's problematic because even though it's a luxury, it's a luxury that confers a real and noticeable advantage.
3. Something that EVERYONE would have, in a just world, but we're going to acknowledge that the world is unjust so in fact not everyone has it.
4. Something that NO ONE ought to have, in a just world, but we're going to acknowledge that the world is unjust so in fact some people have it.
The original list was mostly 1 and 2. Bear was frustrated because her definition of privilege very much includes category 3. I rewrote the list to include lots from category 3, frustrating people for whom "privilege" mostly means 1 and 2. And around and around it goes. Clearly, the problem is that we need some new words. Maybe we can go mug some other languages and rifle through their pockets?
