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Notes on Privilege
Jan. 3rd, 2008 07:53 amYou may have noticed, or not, that I took a pass on the privilege meme.
Mostly because I found it boring. Partly because I have done a very similar exercise before (in a corporate -mandated "diversity training", no less): the facilitator of the exercise lined everyone in the room up, then read off a list of things like the list in the privilege meme. If you or your family had this or that privilege, or you have this or that privilege (a car, say), you took a step forward. If you or your family didn't, you took a step back. At the end of the exercise, people were scattered up and down the room. We may have looked like a homogeneous group at the beginning, but at the end, poof! Diversity illustrated!
And, also, privilege starkly defined. Guess who was at the front of the room? And the back?
And as for me -- I was a few steps behind the front of the room group. This was illuminating. My chronic feeling of almost-but-not-quite? Again, suddenly illustrated, but not on an axis that I had expected. The place where I was always falling a little short wasn't in the arena of personal achievement, or more importantly, individual effort. Oh. Light bulb. I stopped blaming myself for "not trying harder" that day, and it really made a big difference in my approach to life and career and such. I didn't become bitter, or blame my failures on my background, understand, as I have seen people gripe about when discussing this meme. I understood that a) my feeling was valid, but b) its source was unexpected. That is all.
So I didn't do it. Maybe it would be revalatory for you all, but not for me. And I suspected that the meme was supposed to provoke self-reflection and thought more than anything else. Maybe it wasn't working out that way, maybe it was, but whatever. Onward.
But now I find myself getting irritated at the critiques of the meme. They sometimes seem as half-formed and unreflective as they accuse the exercise itself of being.
Yes, it's US-centric. Yes, it concentrates on your family background a lot more than it does on your present circumstances. Yes, it leaves a lot out. Yes, yes, yes.
To my eyes at least, it's obvious that the exercise was designed for classroom use with undergraduate students -- a classroom version of the exercise I participated in, in other words. This explains many of its "design flaws" -- it's tailored for a specific audience, and then it's been taken out of context.
Which is, btw, another reason why I passed on doing it.
It seems to me that the people I see complaining about the meme are ignoring -- deliberately or otherwise -- this out-of-contextness. Instead, they are using the exercise -- making sure of course to highlight the flaws that are a result of this lack of context, without ever entertaining a discussion of where these flaws came from, other than maybe muddled thinking -- as a springboard to attack the very idea of discussing "privilege" itself.
This is not playing fair, in my book. I am not down with this project.
I am also noticing the demographics of who pulls this stunt. Just sayin'.
I find "privilege" a very useful concept indeed. Call me a smug pseudo-academic theoryhead with no connection to real class politics if you like for that. I will just laugh at you.
Mostly because I found it boring. Partly because I have done a very similar exercise before (in a corporate -mandated "diversity training", no less): the facilitator of the exercise lined everyone in the room up, then read off a list of things like the list in the privilege meme. If you or your family had this or that privilege, or you have this or that privilege (a car, say), you took a step forward. If you or your family didn't, you took a step back. At the end of the exercise, people were scattered up and down the room. We may have looked like a homogeneous group at the beginning, but at the end, poof! Diversity illustrated!
And, also, privilege starkly defined. Guess who was at the front of the room? And the back?
And as for me -- I was a few steps behind the front of the room group. This was illuminating. My chronic feeling of almost-but-not-quite? Again, suddenly illustrated, but not on an axis that I had expected. The place where I was always falling a little short wasn't in the arena of personal achievement, or more importantly, individual effort. Oh. Light bulb. I stopped blaming myself for "not trying harder" that day, and it really made a big difference in my approach to life and career and such. I didn't become bitter, or blame my failures on my background, understand, as I have seen people gripe about when discussing this meme. I understood that a) my feeling was valid, but b) its source was unexpected. That is all.
So I didn't do it. Maybe it would be revalatory for you all, but not for me. And I suspected that the meme was supposed to provoke self-reflection and thought more than anything else. Maybe it wasn't working out that way, maybe it was, but whatever. Onward.
But now I find myself getting irritated at the critiques of the meme. They sometimes seem as half-formed and unreflective as they accuse the exercise itself of being.
Yes, it's US-centric. Yes, it concentrates on your family background a lot more than it does on your present circumstances. Yes, it leaves a lot out. Yes, yes, yes.
To my eyes at least, it's obvious that the exercise was designed for classroom use with undergraduate students -- a classroom version of the exercise I participated in, in other words. This explains many of its "design flaws" -- it's tailored for a specific audience, and then it's been taken out of context.
Which is, btw, another reason why I passed on doing it.
It seems to me that the people I see complaining about the meme are ignoring -- deliberately or otherwise -- this out-of-contextness. Instead, they are using the exercise -- making sure of course to highlight the flaws that are a result of this lack of context, without ever entertaining a discussion of where these flaws came from, other than maybe muddled thinking -- as a springboard to attack the very idea of discussing "privilege" itself.
This is not playing fair, in my book. I am not down with this project.
I am also noticing the demographics of who pulls this stunt. Just sayin'.
I find "privilege" a very useful concept indeed. Call me a smug pseudo-academic theoryhead with no connection to real class politics if you like for that. I will just laugh at you.
