Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is also privilege in being unprivileged. We should acknowledge that as well.

Neither of my parents went to college. One parent only has an 8th grade education. I was embarrassed by this fact until my high school guidance counselor showed me how it would be a good thing and work to my advantage. She told me that colleges loved someone like me who'd persevered through all the challenges and still managed to be a 4.0 student. I didn't really trust her 100% until I took the PSATs. I scored a 1540 and colleges started bombarding me with calls and invites to tour their campuses. I got a 1570 on my SATs and the recruiting intensified. With the help of my guidance counselor, I was able to visit most schools for free by utilizing their financial aid departments. There's no way my parents could afford trips like that for me to take tours.

The fact that I had under-educated, blue collar parents worked to my advantage and helped me get into an Ivy. Yes, I had excellent grades and test scores, but without the guidance and knowledge of my counselor, I would have ignored all of those offers for tours and never have applied to any Ivy league schools. Before that I was 100% planning on attending George Mason so I could live at home and save money that way. That's still privilege, IMO.

Same here. I would assume that you, like me, experienced a fairly sh$tty childhood with food scarcity, no heat at times, etc., so I don't feel my scholarship was undeserved. However, it was a little weird to graduate with no debt while my wealthy classmates were saddled with many thousands to pay.

But that's how they achieve their goals of diversity, and I was glad to participate. I'm now a woman in a hugely male-dominated field, and yes, I've gotten every job I've applied for. I'm 100% qualified, and I assume at least one male applicant was, too. But diversity's working in my favor because of what I guess you would call female privilege.

I mean, cool story for you. But you do know that your children will not benefit from such privilege, right?

Also, if you are caucasian, that "female diversity" will only carry you so far. You will win the job over a white male, but if you're up against a female, lesbian woman of color, you will lose the job every time.

I know I was privileged. I grew up UMC. I went to an excellent public school (not that I realized it at the time). Then my parents paid for both college and about half of graduate school, enabling me to get out of student loan debt by 30.

It would be hard as hell to ever enter my industry had I not had those advantages. I would've been shackled by debt into middle age, like millennials will be.

I also had the advantage of being white. I didn't realize it at the time, but that permitted me to get away with stuff that a minority student would not have been able to shrug off. E.g.:

1. Not getting thrown out of an honors program when I was caught cheating in middle school (did get yelled at; never did it again)

2. Not getting arrested while being a drunk idiot with other drunk idiots in a car after senior graduation

3. Not having to prove myself three times over when applying for jobs, renting apartments, etc.

4. Not being consistently under-treated or dismissed by doctors when I've needed medical care

5. Getting the benefit of the doubt when I got mugged once: no cop ever suggested it might've been my fault for being on the wrong street at the wrong time

6. Not having to talk to my son about bowing and scraping to idiot cops if he ever gets pulled over

And so on and so on.

Anonymous wrote:Privilege is just a loaded word

Apparently it's privilege that instead of going on fancy vacations and spending on cars we lived more frugally so we could afford to live in a better school district

Apparently it's privilege to encourage your kids to work hard, study and get good grades

I just call bs on all of it

Doing those things is common sense and if more folks would do it we wouldn't be having these discussions

Apparently it's privilege to go to school/military/trade/skill/job then get married and TEHN have kids once you can afford them

Again if people did that poverty would almost disappear in a generation

Privilege is just a loaded word

Apparently it's privilege that instead of going on fancy vacations and spending on cars we lived more frugally so we could afford to live in a better school district

Apparently it's privilege to encourage your kids to work hard, study and get good grades

I just call bs on all of it

Doing those things is common sense and if more folks would do it we wouldn't be having these discussions

In my observation acknowledging for one’s privilege has become a necessary part of even mundane conversations. It’s the modern hair shirt. Not sure where you’re getting that people are afraid to admit it.

Anonymous wrote:I am shocked by how many people are upset of the SAT adversity score. They do not want to admit the privileges that their children having growing up in a nice school district, safe school, etc. These are all great things! Everyone wants these things for their kids but sadly, many kids do not have access to these resources. Why are people so afraid to own that privilege and be proud of it while also working toward the same future for other kids? What are you afraid of? Honestly if you kid doesn't get into HPY and goes to say, UVA- what do you think will happen? Do you really think their future is lost? Are you afraid they will end up on the streets?

Seriously please help me understand...

Because everyone is FOR diversity and access until it means restricting their OWN access!

Case in point....ask any white college kid who is protesting and marching alongside as an "ally" for under-respresented groups if he/she would just go ahead and step aside and give his/her slot to a student who is equally deserving in merit. You know...b/c of diversity.

They want OTHERS to give up their slots. But do not want to give up THEIR OWN!

I'm going to point out that everyone in this discussion, living in the U.S. with the means to own a computer and the luxury of frittering away time midday to judge others, is also extremely privileged.

I didn't grow up privileged but I did go to college debt free but borrowed money for graduate school. But I always knew that I was lucky to have great parents who really valued education and hard work. My children are very privileged but we have done our best to instill in them a strong work ethic and that once out of school they are 100% on their own. They are all in their early 30's and have succeeded on their own but they know how lucky they are. I watch how they treat the people who help support their lives (child care etc.) and I can see that they have learned something.

Anonymous wrote:There is also privilege in being unprivileged. We should acknowledge that as well.

Neither of my parents went to college. One parent only has an 8th grade education. I was embarrassed by this fact until my high school guidance counselor showed me how it would be a good thing and work to my advantage. She told me that colleges loved someone like me who'd persevered through all the challenges and still managed to be a 4.0 student. I didn't really trust her 100% until I took the PSATs. I scored a 1540 and colleges started bombarding me with calls and invites to tour their campuses. I got a 1570 on my SATs and the recruiting intensified. With the help of my guidance counselor, I was able to visit most schools for free by utilizing their financial aid departments. There's no way my parents could afford trips like that for me to take tours.

The fact that I had under-educated, blue collar parents worked to my advantage and helped me get into an Ivy. Yes, I had excellent grades and test scores, but without the guidance and knowledge of my counselor, I would have ignored all of those offers for tours and never have applied to any Ivy league schools. Before that I was 100% planning on attending George Mason so I could live at home and save money that way. That's still privilege, IMO.

Interesting. Thank you.

Anonymous wrote:There is also privilege in being unprivileged. We should acknowledge that as well.

Neither of my parents went to college. One parent only has an 8th grade education. I was embarrassed by this fact until my high school guidance counselor showed me how it would be a good thing and work to my advantage. She told me that colleges loved someone like me who'd persevered through all the challenges and still managed to be a 4.0 student. I didn't really trust her 100% until I took the PSATs. I scored a 1540 and colleges started bombarding me with calls and invites to tour their campuses. I got a 1570 on my SATs and the recruiting intensified. With the help of my guidance counselor, I was able to visit most schools for free by utilizing their financial aid departments. There's no way my parents could afford trips like that for me to take tours.

The fact that I had under-educated, blue collar parents worked to my advantage and helped me get into an Ivy. Yes, I had excellent grades and test scores, but without the guidance and knowledge of my counselor, I would have ignored all of those offers for tours and never have applied to any Ivy league schools. Before that I was 100% planning on attending George Mason so I could live at home and save money that way. That's still privilege, IMO.

Same here. I would assume that you, like me, experienced a fairly sh$tty childhood with food scarcity, no heat at times, etc., so I don't feel my scholarship was undeserved. However, it was a little weird to graduate with no debt while my wealthy classmates were saddled with many thousands to pay.

But that's how they achieve their goals of diversity, and I was glad to participate. I'm now a woman in a hugely male-dominated field, and yes, I've gotten every job I've applied for. I'm 100% qualified, and I assume at least one male applicant was, too. But diversity's working in my favor because of what I guess you would call female privilege.

Anonymous wrote:They don't think they are successful because of privilege. They think they are successful because they are smart and made all the right choices, thus they are OWED good things.

Why don't you let those who are actually unhappy about the "adversity score" address the "WHY" instead of you speculating based on your own disdain and bias toward these people?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fck off. I worked for my "privilege". My parents were the first in my family to go to college. I resent this being counted against my kids for purely political reasons.

Case in point

It is a case in point of me not admitting privilege because my family did not have "privilege" handed to it, we had to work for it.

So fck you and your eye rolling too.

NP here. Honest question, and pls don't rip my head off: are your children today, 5/16/19, experiencing privilege or adversity? If there's a continuum or number scale, whatever, with zero being the worst adverse conditions imaginable outside of prison, and 10 being a life of yachting the mediterranean … where do you place your **kids** today, 5/16/19?

I'll answer that: my son is about a 7-8. I (like you) had to work harder at his age, so I was about a 5 when I was 17. My parents — also the first in their families to attend college — were 3-4. THEIR parents lived actual adversity in the steerage of infection-filled ships coming to the US, then living in tenements in lower NYC and facing daily discrimination and living in filth and disease.

In my book, my white grandparents should have rec'd an adversity bump from the College Board on the SAT. My white, affluent son in 2019, four generations later, should not.

I'm not sure what privilege means.

My problem with this whole "privilege" thing that has erupted in the last few years is is that it's used as a wedge issue to divide people firmly into camps of haves and have-nots. The reality is that very few people are on one side or the other. You can have all the privilege of affluence, but at the same time suffer from major psychological, health, family, depression issues while a working class person may be working two jobs and living a financially constrained life, but with a warm and supporting family.

There are people who are more fortunate in every sense of the word, but so what. There's nothing new in this. At all. And a lot of them also worked very hard for what they have. So what if they had a better family origin, they still worked off their butts for what they have. So what are they supposed to do or change? What do you want them to do? What is "acknowledging" privilege going to do?

And I also see people using privilege, or rather, the lack of "privilege" to justify mistakes and flaws in their own lives. It's a mechanism they use to allow themselves from accepting the truth and looking directly at themselves and their own actions. It allows them to resent people they see as better off without doing what it takes to become one of those people, especially as they start attributing a misplaced moral dimension to privilege versus unprivileged.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fck off. I worked for my "privilege". My parents were the first in my family to go to college. I resent this being counted against my kids for purely political reasons.

You really don’t get it apparently.

I’m a lawyer in biglaw. No one in the building works harder than the janitorial staff. And many of them have second and third jobs. Lots of people work hard. But their hard work doesn’t help their kids like mine does.

Thank you; exactly.

Anonymous wrote:Fck off. I worked for my "privilege". My parents were the first in my family to go to college. I resent this being counted against my kids for purely political reasons.

Of course, no one else has worked like you have. You exemplify the reason for the original post.