Privilege exercise

[Anonymous]

So yeah, maybe the club could've handled the privilege test scores better, but imagine if she had to deal with the things other people live with.

I think the point is that the score that OP's daughter got on the exercise reflected that she was LESS privileged, not more. At least, assuming the exercise is scored the same way it was when my child did it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At least it’s just an exercise.... imagine if it was her reality... like every day.

Omg, I know. A close friend grew up in Baltimore's high-rise projects otherwise known as 'Murder Homes'. He is a beautiful, strong, positive person, but reading between the lines of some things he's said make my heart sink. We were talking about gross foods, and I told him about this one time my grandmother boiled a whole cow's tongue for dinner and set it on the table whole. I was so disturbed that cried and left the room until dinner ended. His answer: "Was there anything else to eat?"

This is a tiny sliver of painful experiences he's been through because his skin is brown and America is deeply racist. Since meeting this friend, I dove deep into learning US history by reading Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard White, Frederick Douglas. The deeper I go, the more my heart breaks.

So yeah, maybe the club could've handled the privilege test scores better, but imagine if she had to deal with the things other people live with.

PS. And before someone blames his mother for being poor and having children she couldn't afford, take my word for it that his mother is brilliant and you've no place to judge.

I think you are misunderstanding. OP’s child scored very low so presumably lacks economic/racial/etc. privilege. Everyone else scored really high and it made op child self conscious to see that everyone else had so much more than her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that every white person became fully and appropriately aware of white privilege. What would the next step be, politically, and as a matter of policy! for ending white privilege?

Ending all legacy admits to all universities, even private ones. Reparations, possibly, even for people who don't "deserve" it (essentially redistributing wealth from white America to black America). A lot more teeth to anti-discrimination law, with zero attention paid to whether or not someone's livelihood or reputation might be damaged if found guilty. Automatic, public, independent investigations of police shootings. A careful combing of all laws, on every government level, to make sure that even though "neutral," they aren't designed to favor those people already in power.

It would feel a lot like losing privileges to most white people, even though the goal would be undoing the automatice assumption that our current value and power systems are the best ones.

Ending legacy? Doesn't affect the vast majority (99%+ ) of white people who don't benefit either. And you ignore that black people are now increasingly benefiting from legacy admits (see the Obama girls as a perfect example).

Reparations? You know, there was a huge war in which hundreds of thousands of men died and the near total destruction of the southern economy. All that wealth based on slave went into slaves and more lands - and all that disappeared overnight. And it also conveniently ignores that the majority of Americans, including the majority of white Americans, do not have ancestors who were here at the time of the civil war. Are you saying that a hispanic or Asian immigrant's taxpayer dollars needs to be used for reparations for something that happened 150 years ago?

A lot more teeth to anti discrimination laws? How? We already have very strict anti discrimination laws. Among the best in the world. How would you make the laws stronger? It's a statement that's easy to say until you hit the reality. Would you legally penalize people for making racist statements? What about freedom of speech? Or what about a black man calling white people cracker? Would that be included too?

Automatic, public, independent investigations of police shootings? We already investigate these matters. How would you change it?

A careful combing of all laws, on every government level, to make sure that even though "neutral," they aren't designed to favor those people already in power? What people in power are you talking about? Who would do these investigations? What people would these "reformed" laws benefit? As with above, it's easy to make this statement but you likely have no knowledge of the reality or what this entails (let alone the abuses it lends itself to). How do you know you aren't subject to your own biases and prejudices that you seek only very specific problems and will bend the situation to make sure you do find the problems you're looking for?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter is a part of a club and last night they did something called a privilege rally where they had a list of things like “I have never been a religious minority” “I have never wondered where my next meal will come from” “my parents are still married.” There were 75 items on the list and kids had to check off each item as it applied to them and then tally them up and place their number on a board. All the other kids had numbers in the 60s and 70s, my daughter had a number in the 30s.

She felt extremely isolated, and while I have to imagine some of this is sort of a “no one is staring at you you’re just self conscious” situation she says she felt like everyone was looking at her and she doesn’t want to go back.

Suggestions on how to handle this?

easy, don't go back.

[Anonymous]

I think the intent of activities like these is really hard to get across unless you have some sort of accompanying exercise that makes the "privileged" actually feel what it's like to NOT be privileged.

Kind of like the Doctors Without Borders exhibit where they had people walk through being a refugee and making hard decisions along the way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that every white person became fully and appropriately aware of white privilege. What would the next step be, politically, and as a matter of policy! for ending white privilege?

Ending all legacy admits to all universities, even private ones. Reparations, possibly, even for people who don't "deserve" it (essentially redistributing wealth from white America to black America). A lot more teeth to anti-discrimination law, with zero attention paid to whether or not someone's livelihood or reputation might be damaged if found guilty. Automatic, public, independent investigations of police shootings. A careful combing of all laws, on every government level, to make sure that even though "neutral," they aren't designed to favor those people already in power.

It would feel a lot like losing privileges to most white people, even though the goal would be undoing the automatice assumption that our current value and power systems are the best ones.

Ending legacy? Doesn't affect the vast majority (99%+ ) of white people who don't benefit either. And you ignore that black people are now increasingly benefiting from legacy admits (see the Obama girls as a perfect example).

Reparations? You know, there was a huge war in which hundreds of thousands of men died and the near total destruction of the southern economy. All that wealth based on slave went into slaves and more lands - and all that disappeared overnight. And it also conveniently ignores that the majority of Americans, including the majority of white Americans, do not have ancestors who were here at the time of the civil war. Are you saying that a hispanic or Asian immigrant's taxpayer dollars needs to be used for reparations for something that happened 150 years ago?

A lot more teeth to anti discrimination laws? How? We already have very strict anti discrimination laws. Among the best in the world. How would you make the laws stronger? It's a statement that's easy to say until you hit the reality. Would you legally penalize people for making racist statements? What about freedom of speech? Or what about a black man calling white people cracker? Would that be included too?

Automatic, public, independent investigations of police shootings? We already investigate these matters. How would you change it?

A careful combing of all laws, on every government level, to make sure that even though "neutral," they aren't designed to favor those people already in power? What people in power are you talking about? Who would do these investigations? What people would these "reformed" laws benefit? As with above, it's easy to make this statement but you likely have no knowledge of the reality or what this entails (let alone the abuses it lends itself to). How do you know you aren't subject to your own biases and prejudices that you seek only very specific problems and will bend the situation to make sure you do find the problems you're looking for?

Exactly. I'm sure the PP is a very sincere person, but extremely naive

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. To be clear, I do think these exercises have their value, and I think privilege is very real. The issue wasn’t so much the concept, but how they went about it and made the scores very “public”

Anyway, DD wasn’t comfortable talking to them in person but emailed the advisor when she got home from school today about why the activity was problematic and how she hopes they’ll reconsider the way they implement such activities in the future.

Hi, I have done a similar exercise as an adult. It is a very different thing when you are an adult and look around at the different levels of privilege in a room and realize how many people had more privilege than you growing up. I was one of the "low scores" and felt pride that I had achieved so much. The way I looked at it, I grew up with far less privilege than my colleagues and yet here I was. I knew that that I had travelled further to get to where we all stood and I felt a sense of accomplishment, not shame. I also felt a sense of gratitude for the privileges I did have. (I had the privilege of living in an excellent school district, access to a job as a teen and college student, able to do well without the need of tutors we couldn't afford, a neighborhood free from violence, etc.) I hope your daughter can feel proud of her accomplishments including the fact that he had the courage to email the advisor and express how she felt. I am sure that wasn't easy and good for her for doing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the intent of activities like these is really hard to get across unless you have some sort of accompanying exercise that makes the "privileged" actually feel what it's like to NOT be privileged.

Kind of like the Doctors Without Borders exhibit where they had people walk through being a refugee and making hard decisions along the way.

That was a great exhibit and there are schools and groups who do similar exercise with children and adults to help them understand with regard to many issues. There are some educators committed to educating children on social justice and equity issues who have designed very meaningful exercises. The hard thing is that many adults and parents do not discuss these issues with their kids in any meaningful way. Do they discuss the difference between an actual need (food, shelter, water, safety) versus a want (the latest sneakers, video game, Latte, etc.) In our area there are a lot of things that are really wants that folks think of as needs. Discussing these issues can help your children develop gratitude versus a sense of entitlement. Our kids really learned a lot going to the Doctors Without Borders exhibit which they still talk about. The fact is you donb't need to go to that exhibit to discuss and talk about the issues they were trying to make people understand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Activities like this just make me angry. My teen had to do one at school and came home so confused because they kept talking about white privelige and so many of the things didn’t apply to him, even though he’s white. It’s a difficult conversation to have with your kid when he’s made to feel embarrassed that he’s white and further embarrassed that he’s not coming from storybook circumstances.

It's a difficult conversation, yes. His discomfort is at being confronted with the privilege he never considered he had, even though he has all of it. It's important to overcome that instinct to internalize and say, "Who? Me? I'm not a bad person! How dare you!" and come to terms with what privilege actually means. Your language -- "he's made to feel embarrassed" is troubling. He isn't a victim. And it's incumbent upon you to reinforce that. He needs to listen more, drop his defenses, and not view a discussion about the zeitgeist as some sort of personal attack. And if he has moments where he feels like his input is not valued or that his station in life is being attacked, consider that a lesson in how other members of other races and ethnicities feel frequently in our society.

So now white people arent even allowed to be embarrassed? They should just completely deny their own emotions and focus on the plight of those less priveliged?

My son came how and expressed the same feelings and also expressed confusion as to what he was supposed to feel. I shared my own experience and talked openly. I explained that this wasn't about whether you were "bad" or "good" but that rather it was about awareness and empathy. My guess is that you probably don't worry about the police stopping your son and questioning him. Do you worry that when your son walks in your neighborhood someone will call the police and report a young black male casing houses? These are things that have happened to black boys I know in my predominantly white neighborhood. I will say that class is often what interferes with white people understanding that white privilege exists because there are also privileges that come with wealth or being in different classes. In the US we "pretend" that everyone is mainly middle class. It's weird. Someone who makes $40,000 is middle class and someone who makes $200,000 considers themselves middle class. That is where it gets messy. A white working class kid who has to save up to buy soccer cleats because his parents can't afford them is frustrated that someone is telling him that he is privileged because he is white when he has black teammates from wealthier families that can afford to buy cleats and all sorts of other things for them that the white kid's family can't. That is a class/wealth issue. The thing is, that same white kid can walk into Starbucks sit and wait for someone without anyone calling the police on them. Try to talk to your son about the differences. If we can all do that we would all be better off as a society.

I am also not trying to start a class war. I am just trying to say that we need to talk to our children about these issues if we want them to have a better, more accepting world than the one we grew up in.--Signed a white mom from a working class background who is now in a different class than the one I grew up in

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It already happened. There's no significant "handling" of it now.

It's so that they think through things like this going forward.
Sometimes you can't make things better for yourself but can make them better for those who come up after you.

I'm the poster who was on food stamps for a long time. My DD got really into animals and nature and I found something similar to a 4H club in our city. It was on the opposite end of the city from where we live, so just to attend the first meeting was two hours roundtrip of commuting. And then the woman running the meeting talks about driving an hour outside of the city to visit baby goats, and an organic farm, etc. I asked about transportation to these - are they in walking distance of train lines or will there be a bus for the group, etc. She said no, all the parents take turns carpooling. I don't have a car. She suggested I could get a car for under $10k. Right. Like I had that kind of money laying around. Like I would spend that kind of money so my daughter could go feed baby goats once a month. DD had to quit. There was just no way to make it work. And I laid out for the leader of the group exactly why she had to quit, just so she'd know.

I am sorry that leader was a jerk to you. I remember being in Girl ascouts and driving over to my leader’s house for my mom to tell her something because the leader didn’t have a phone. This was rural Ohio in the 80s before cell phones. My mom never told me they were poor, she acted like it was just a normal choice that some people didn’t have TVs or phones. Then again I grew up in a college town and it was hard to tell who was poor and whose parents were just hippies.

[Anonymous]

One way I have seen this handled better is for kids to draw a fictional persona at random and then do the questionnaire / privilege “walk” in someone else’s shoes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry that happened. There was a similar response from the kids that were at the back in this video https://youtu.be/4K5fbQ1-zps
Two problems. If done it should be for self reflection and not announced and don't bring race into it. I would be in the front if I were in this video and I'm AA. I'm not saying I'm not pre judged as an AA, but I am privileged.

Exactly. I’m white and I would have been on the back line.

I did that exercise as an adult, was in the back of the line and I am white. I was not traumatized by it nor did I feel ashamed. I felt pretty freaking proud of myself because while I started with less I arrived at the same place. My friend in the back ofd the room felt the same way. To me it was proof that all of the entitled rich kids I'd grown up around who thought they were all that weren't. There are people who get a huge head start in life and they take it for granted. My friend and I took advanatage of every opportunity we were presented with, worked hard, and moved up. It's all in how you look at it. Listen to the song Immigrants on the Hamilton re-mix. It has a similar sense of pride in it. "Look how far I come" and "Immigrants, we get the job done." That is pride not hand wringing.

[Anonymous]

That’s the thing - most aware kids now WANT to have overcome diversity because it is not cool to have had it easier. Which kills me because all I have wanted to do is give my kids a better life than I had growing up. You can’t win, it seems, but it does seem unfair to be called out for privilege because your parents worked to give it to you (rather than it being multi-generational).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That’s the thing - most aware kids now WANT to have overcome diversity because it is not cool to have had it easier. Which kills me because all I have wanted to do is give my kids a better life than I had growing up. You can’t win, it seems, but it does seem unfair to be called out for privilege because your parents worked to give it to you (rather than it being multi-generational).

My kids are in the same boat and I don't think it is any more unfair than before. To me it is just life. The fact is that all of the kids you are talking about are better off or luckier than the children living in Syria now. Perspective is everything. If you are coming from a place of gratitude and humility then I think it is not a problem. It's not "bad" or "uncool" or "better", it's just different. My kids don't feel bad that they have it better than I did. They are aware. They still know that I expect them to work hard. I also want them to know what my folks taught me--to whom much is given, much is expected. Even though we didn't have much, there were those who had it harder. I know of kids born into wealthy families who have physical, learning, or health issues. They face their own challenges. The kids who get on my kids' nerves are the ones who were born on homeplate with a five run lead and think they are just getting up to bat. It's the taking everything for granted that grates on them. Counting your blessings and having gratitude and perspective goes a long way. Those values are not exclusive to any class or group.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Activities like this just make me angry. My teen had to do one at school and came home so confused because they kept talking about white privelige and so many of the things didn’t apply to him, even though he’s white. It’s a difficult conversation to have with your kid when he’s made to feel embarrassed that he’s white and further embarrassed that he’s not coming from storybook circumstances.

Sounds like the exercise worked. The point of these things is to make your teen question the status quo. Some discomfort is natural, and it'll help DS to perhaps empathize a little with brown-skinned minority kids who might experience this discomfort on a regular basis. BTW, a good teacher would also introduce things like economics, education, etc., and other factors that go into identity.

No one discloses that. The people that arrange these types of exercises are 100% focused on skin color. No one chooses the circumstances they are born into. It should be possible to teach empathy without degrading self- worth.

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