Hard Work vs. Privilege

Great Debates
201

[quote=“monstro, post:196, topic:777322”]

I don’t think they are analogous at all. A kid running a race doesn’t get a boost from his parents every time he goes around the track.
/QUOTE]

I was using the analogy from the article which said (paraphrased) that poor kids start at the starting line of a 100 meter race, but with a bear trap on one foot. Middle class kids start at the 20, 30 or 40 meter line, and wealthy kids start at 70, 80 or 90 meters.

My point was that if a 10 second 100 meter dash is considered successful, then yes, it’s considerably easier for a kid starting on the 30 meter mark to make it across in 10 seconds or under, than a kid starting further back. I went on to say that if a kid starts on the 30 and does it in under 7 seconds, that’s STILL impressive, even if he did start at the 30, as he ran his segment of the race faster than what you’d need to run it to be "successful’ starting at the 0 meter mark (the starting line).

And LHOD, all I’m getting at is that the concept of privilege stumbles over its own wording with a lot of people. It’s a somewhat subtle concept, in that it is a relative thing, and it’s not meant to connote anything but the relative “privileged-ness” of two people or groups.

But outside of academic-ish circles, saying that someone grew up privileged tends to inspire thinking of the kid in “Captains Courageous”, Sam Walton’s children, or any number of other people with significant advantages above and beyond the norm.

And most middle class people do consider themselves to be the norm, because middle class people ARE the norm. Maybe not in terms of children, but in terms of the total population,most households make upwards of 50k a year (~55%) which is solidly middle class.

So when someone talks about “privilege” to describe the relative advantages between two groups, and someone’s in the “normal” group that’s being described as privileged, it tends to rankle, as their self-perception is not one of living a privileged life- they still have to pay bills, they still have to worry about their kids’ schooling, they still have to worry about emergencies and unforeseen events, losing jobs, etc…

Now I realize that’s half the point, but I can’t help but think that the phrasing is a big part of the problem, especially when we run across more loaded terms like “white privilege”.

202

I agree with all of this.

I don’t buy the reasoning that there’s something wrong with the word “privilege”. We use “privilege” all the damn time, almost always in a positive way. “It’s a privilege to meet you!” “I have the privilege the introduce to you our new manager.” “I’ve been such a good inmate that I’ve been granted more privileges!” And yet someone talking about privilege in the context of power relations is inherently ooky? Nope, not buying it. If people feel uncomfortable talking about this, well, that’s a hang-up they need to get over. It shouldn’t be catered to by coming up with other terms (which are never suggested).

People play semantics games to avoid a meaningful discussion.

203

I don’t think you’ve accurately represented the facts here. The meat of it, from your cite, says:

First off, your claim was about “American school children” but your cite says “U.S. public school students”. That’s an important distinction. The latter is a subset of the former.

Secondly, it all hinges on the idea that ‘eligible for free / reduced lunch’ (the metric used by the study) = ‘live in poverty’ (your assertion). Certainly some of the kids that are eligible for free lunch live in poverty, but not all of them are what most of us would recognize as poverty-stricken.

Doing some digging, it looks like ‘eligible for reduced lunch’ includes not just families below the poverty line, but those within 185% of it. In most states, this means that a family of 4 making $44,995 a year is eligible. Does that sound like “live in poverty” to you? It does not to me.

204

I am one who thinks the term privilege is often used in a way with negative connotations in these discussions. I prefer the term “fortunate” myself. I am very fortunate to have had the parents and support network that I did and continue to have. I don’t consider it a privilege in any way. A privilege is a right or something granted. That’s just not true in the way it’s used in these discussions, and it almost certainly doesn’t apply to individuals. Individuals can be fortunate due to whatever circumstance, however. I was born in the US which means I’ve basically won the sperm lottery. That’s not privilege, but it is certainly fortunate.

And even if you disagree with the above, if it is known that a significant portion of the audience is lost when using the loaded term, wouldn’t it be more effective to find a different way to convey the same concept?

205

bump, here’s analogy for you:

Let’s say the new president makes it so that all natural-born citizens are entitled to free day care, free health care, and free college.

Would it be incorrect to say that a natural-born citizen is granted more privileges than a naturalized citizen? Is it wrong to say that when it comes to health care access, natural-born citizens are more privileged than other groups?
Your typical middle-class white kid has more privileges than your typical poor black kid, correct? If saying the former has more privilege than the latter is incorrect, what would be a better description?

Here is another example:

A fifth grade teacher has two students–Suzy and Johnny. When Suzy acts up, the teacher gives her a pat on the head and a piece of butterscotch. When Johnny acts up, she tells him he’s an idiot and makes him do fifty push-ups in his underwear. Is it wrong to say that Suzy is privileged over Johnny when it comes to classroom discipline? Does it matter that neither one of them gets treated in a “normal” way?

206

The same arguments would shift to the new word, whatever it is, and we’d be right back here. The issue is with the underlying concept for some people. Making it about the word choice is a red herring. I just don’t buy the whole “if only they’d use nicer terminology” complaint at all.

207

I’ll give you ‘public school students’, but that is still90% of students.. And there are poor kids in private schools, as well.

Second, the trendline is significant, regardless–in half a generation, school populations have changed drastically and poverty has become more and more the norm.

Finally, I don’t know what you want to use as a measure of poverty, but in an urban area (and most Americans live in urban areas), a household–especially a single parent with three kids–living on $45K/yr is pretty damn poor. Even if we stipulate that the very top of that range is more working-class than impoverished, the children in that house are going to have some pretty serious disadvantages. And in any case, the fact remains that there are now a significantly higher percentage of kids on one side of the line than the other and there’s no reason to think that that shift has them all clustered at the top.

If you look on page 6 of this 6 page PDF, it gives the percentages of kids on free lunch. It’s 44% nationally and over 50% in many states. Free lunch is defined as 130% of the poverty line, and I would certainly consider a family of 4 earning $31,000/yr to be poor–especially if it’s 3 kids.

208

Any of you suffering the guilt of excess privilege might want to check this out.

209

Exactly. We could go on and on with similar examples of how privilege can blind you to the difficulties others face. That’s why acknowledging it is important.

210

I agree – I think the resistance is to the concept, not the word. For people who have experienced significant challenges in their lives (most people, probably), I think it can be difficult to consider that big groups of other people might have experienced even more significant challenges than they faced. It doesn’t matter what word we use.

211

Perhaps this is true for some, but I am saying that I personally have no problem with the concept, but do have a problem with the word privilege and how it’s used in this context. I tell my kids they are lucky or fortunate. I do not tell them they are privileged. Reflect for a moment that I offer these thoughts as someone who typically doesn’t align with your views. It’s fine to think that you understand the scope of thought of those who disagree, but consider that you may not.

It’s not like today a white guy can call out, “hey I’m white, where are my extra rights!”. If they could, that would be a privilege, a right that is granted. I agree that a white guy can often be treated differently, and in many cases, better than a non-white guy. That may be fortunate for that person, but it’s not by any right that they have accrued or been granted.

I think word choice matters in effective messaging. If you don’t, then keep doing the same thing I guess?

212

Thanks for sharing. I’ll take this into consideration. It’s possible that you’re right, and most opposition to discussing privilege is to the word and not the concept. Most of the opposition that I’ve seen has been to the concept, though – you’re the first person I can recall who has no problem with the concept and only a problem with the word.

213

So you’ve never heard “X is not a right. It’s a privilege”? Because I hear people say this all the time.

I think privilege is an apt way of describing your “fortune”.

You are entitled to nothing.

Your parents were granted the privilege of raising you–because the state could very well have enacted laws to take you away (as they used to do with blacks and Native Americans). You were granted the privilege of attending school–because the state could have very well barred you from being formally educated (as they used to do with blacks). You have been granted the privilege of seeking employment based on your own abilities and desires–the state could very well enact laws that proscribe your employment (like it used to do for women). You have been granted the privilege to be a free person, since it is the state who decides who is deserving of freedom and who is not.

Even our rights are privileges. Freedom of speech and religion are not only NOT universal concepts, they are rarely found on a global scale. So you are privileged to be able to express yourself however you want. And you are also fortunate.

A significant portion think “racist” is a loaded term, even when it is 100% accurate. All this says is that people are hypersensitive so-and-sos. They can overcome their hang-ups through exposure therapy. The more we talk about “privilege”, hopefully the less knee-jerky people will be over it.

214

okay, so if someone says to you, “Check your fortune.” You will do all of the things that we have been talking about in this thread about “check your privilege.”, and it’s just the word that you find bothersome?

215

I agree on both points. It was a minor correction, and I never claimed that private schools didn’t have poor kids.

My understanding is that the poverty rate has hovered around 11-15% (nationally) for decades now. The trendline is essentially flat.

I’m not sure what is driving the change in NSLP eligibility. Is it that the eligibility requirements have changed since 2000? Is it that, while the national poverty #'s have been fairly static, childhood poverty is actually capturing an increasing share of that?

Well, we could use the actual official federal poverty threshold for measurement. That doesn’t seem like too-radical of an approach.

I agree that more money makes life easier and better (which is why I work to acquire more money). Certainly a kid living with both parents that have a household income of $100K has significant advantages and opportunities that are not present in the household of a single mother with three children making $45k, and kids in that household have significant advantages over a family of 7 that only makes $15k/year.

No, it does not. Page 6 gives the percentages of kids eligible for free or reduced lunch. They’re not all “on” free lunch.

Why might a family who is eligible for the program not participate? Well, off the top of my head I can think of a few reasons, but one of them is that perhaps they feel like they’re doing well enough and don’t need free lunch - which goes directly to my point that eligibility for free / reduced lunch is not a good metric for “living in poverty”.

216

Well that phrase construction would offend my sense of grammar that’s for sure. But if someone says “check your privilege” I would tune them out. If they said, you’re very fortunate for the things that were provided to you, I’d agree.

This stretches the description to an abstraction that isn’t useful IMO. The first thing that comes to my mind is the phrase without light, there can be no dark. If everything as you say is truly a privilege, then everything is a privilege and that’s not a useful way to describe the world.

People are entitled to things that are not privileges. Because the State may violate someone’s rights, that does not mean recognition of those rights is a privilege.

217

As far as I know, they have not changed in forever. My understanding is that yes, childhood poverty is increasing. It seems to be a pretty obvious interpretation of the data, and I haven’t seen anyone anywhere propose a different interpretation.

Those thresholds are widely considered to be too low, which is why almost all social services start at some greater number than that–which seems to suggest that the government itself considers need to start somewhere above the threshold.

Those numbers come from kids who turn in the paperwork. I’ve read the paperwork, and I don’t think there’s an option to be “eligible” but “decline”–though I am open to correction. People who don’t want to be part of the program don’t fill out the application.

Whatever metric you propose, it seems to me that it is likely to correlate with the trend in increased eligibility for free-and-reduced lunch.

218

But everything is NOT a privilege.

I mean, if someone put up a sign barring you from their store, would you think you were being granted a privilege? No, you wouldn’t.

But if that same person put up a sign welcoming you, you probably would, right?

Now let’s say there are no signs. But some people are still kept out of the store, whille others are given access.

The word “privilege” still applies even though the discrimination is not overt. The second group has a privilege (access to a store) that the first group does not have. All other things being equal, the second group has more privilege than the first group.

You can say the second group has more “fortune” than the first group if you want to. But doing so doesn’t offer any improvement or advancement to the discussion. Indeed, it makes it sound like all the first group needs to do is to make more “fortune” for themselves, rather than try to fight for a specific privilege.

The things people are entitled to exist solely on paper. That paper can be destroyed. Without the paper, we’re entitled to nothing.

Privilege is not a legal construct, but a social one. Rights are a legal construct. Two-hundred years ago, white males had more rights than black women in the US. Presently, white males and black women have the same rights. But they don’t have the same privilege because of all those years of unequal rights. Two-hundred years from now, black women may have more privilege than white men. Hopefully they will enjoy the same rights. But that isn’t guaranteed.

219

I agree that AA was always meant to be temporary. I don’t think AA was meant to counteract privilege because we will never actually get rid of privilege, just mitigate it a bit. We will never negate privilege as long as there is a white majority holding positions of power and authority throughout the country and certainly not while 3/4th of the country is white.

Privilege is not useful as another form of racism against which we can have a grievance, its useful as a way of explaining to people… white people… why their perspective on racism is colored by their lack of exposure to the pointy end of that racism stick.

220

I guess my problem with using fortune or luck, is that it is as if that’s just the way tings are. You were fortunate, or lucky, and that is the reason for your advantages.

It completely negates any responsibility or obligation to society to take a look at this comparative advantage, and to decide whether maintaining that discrepancy is in society’s best interest. (Sometimes it is, or at least, trying to eliminate it would cause more harm than good.)

You may be fortunate to be born into the prevailing ethnic group, but it is society’s actions that turn that into privilege.