There are benefits people receive from a combination of choices and to some extent luck. Sorry Ayn Rand…some people just get crappy breaks in life.
I have listed some obvious advantages that kids from high SES families can provide their children. This stuff has to do with $$$$$ and to a commitment to education by a family.
Stay at home mother or excellent day care. I stayed at home for seven years and was able to provide a great deal to my kids. On the other hand, my best friend has been a director at day cares for years and she ran an incredibly tight ship. The kids received attention, had great opportunity for socialization with other kids, were read to, kept a schedule, napped, did art etc. She provided a wonderful environment at her program.
Better K-12 education because more expensive neighborhoods generally have better schools.
Access to excellent health care...this means catching any medical issue early and affording the treatment
Excellent nutrition.
Tutoring either from parent themselves or paid for.
HLS is now majority female. If we’re going from you have privilege if you’re male to you have privilege if you’re male and your dad has the connections to land you a position at Cravath, I think we’re moving the goal post.
@roethlisburger But that is exactly what is meant by systemic issues and privilege. That is not moving the goal post. That is recognizing that one 18 year old who is the product of one type of background has more privileges than another 18 year old who comes out of another type of background. Things will come easier to one of them. Doors will be opened. Jobs(or at least interviews) will be found. THAT is exactly the point of the discussion of privilege.
Of course, what gets to count as “a commitment to education by a family” is often made possible by the money that family has—just for starters, if a family is poor enough that both parents have to work two jobs just to keep the household financially afloat, in most cases the parents aren’t going to have enough energy remaining to be “committed” to their children’s education (that is, not committed in the ways that upper- and upper-middle-class families tend to perceive as commitment).
And then the problem gets worse when the fact that those parents can’t attend PTA meetings and volunteer at school and help with homework gets turned into the idea that the family deserves any negative educational outcomes that result.
A. Some advantages and disadvantages are earned by the person whom they affect. Example: school achievement through one’s own ability and effort within the context of opportunities available.
B. Some advantages and disadvantages are earned by someone else and inherited by the person whom they affect. Example: school opportunities made available or not by parental wealth or lack thereof (such wealth may have been earned by the parents or inherited from their parents), or legacy status in college admissions.
C. Some advantages and disadvantages are not earned, such as those that result from unearned aspects like race and gender.
Most people seem to think that outcome differences resulting from A are acceptable and desirable. But there appears to be strong disagreement on how much B and C affect outcome differences, whether to do anything about them, and (if so) what to do about them.
A few of you in this thread sound a lot like people that were recently protesting in a certain city…
I’m not sure how you all expect genuine discussions on problems of identity to happen if you are afraid to even have them…
Also…I love hearing straight people tell queer people that sexuality is a “choice”, and white people telling black people that they are exaggerating about racism in policing or any other institution. (/sarcasm)
It kinda proves the point of having these conversations when the same people denouncing that they’re privileleged can’t help but be condescending towards the groups that aren’t.
@roethlisburger Regarding post #91 -there is another to add
F. Many women with young children do not want or can’t work the 60+ hours per week that being a partner at a big firm can mean. So they step back or step out or take a flexible, reduced schedule which means no partner track
Yes, white kids do have ‘privilege’. But in the world of college admission, do they really have A lot of it? Sure, a white kid is much, much more likely because of his upbringing, to be applying to selective colleges. But once at the starting gate does the privilege shrink a bit? Aren’t the admit rates for white kids tougher than for URMs? Aren’t the upper middle class white kids who don’t qualify for aid, but can’t afford $60k sometimes priced out? Are the full pay white kids whose parents donate to the annual fund subsidizing others? Are the white kids who know they have privilege but act with great responsibility, sometimes given a bad rap?
I am going to paraphrase a post from a few years back. The poster said he asked his son if he had ever been told to “check your privilge” at college. The son answered, “no, because I’m not a jerk.”
I don’t think most rational people would argue that some people are more privileged than others. However, a half hour of diversity training which purposely creates a divide between students does little to address the root cause of our social problems and I doubt it will spark awareness that will drive real, meaningful change.
The problem isn’t that white, upper income males are privileged. The problem is that inequities exist and we do nothing to address them. Telling an 18-year-old white male that he’s privileged and being smugly satisfied that you were able to publicly mortify him isn’t going to prevent his URM friend from being assaulted by the police. What do you expect him to do to about it?
I think two things need to happen. The adults who want change need to act. Holding a diversity workshop isn’t taking action. It’s pushing the problem off to the next generation. People who are asking young teens to check their privilege also need to ask themselves what they’ve done today to drive change. Are you fighting the injustice around you? Are you providing the young people you know with the tools to do so? Are the colleges providing tools to the students who want to take action? Words without action are meaningless. We also need to educate students. This used to happen in college classrooms. Students are there to learn, and there are better ways to teach than the exercise described in this thread.
“However, a half hour of diversity training which purposely creates a divide between students does little to address the root cause of our social problems and I doubt it will spark awareness that will drive real, meaningful change.”
Honestly, I bet it does get through to some and increases their awareness. Even the ones uncomfortable about it like OP’s daughter are talking about it, and that alone isn’t a bad thing, IMO. Sparking conversations. Maybe down the road it will cause her to think twice when a situation presents itself.
How about approaching things with an open mind instead of jumping to “a divide” assumption? Isn’t that what all college students should be bringing with them to college?
I also sincerely doubt that this was the only orientation activity. I’m sure there were other activities focused on community and bonding. Exercises like this one are centered on recognizing and acknowledging differences.
“being smugly satisfied that you were able to publicly mortify him”
The speech here is so loaded with negativity and close-mindedness. Remember that you are referring to something third hand.
It seems you, too, are making a lot of assumptions, doschicos. Why presume you know the outcome of the experience? In my child’s experience, not only were the students not talking about it, they were purposefully avoiding each other after the experience. The most meaningful experiences my offspring have had in this regard have been candid conversations with actual peers, not mandated training led by an outsider.
Activities like this open a door to discussion and awareness. We don’t exactly how the OP’s daughter’s school handled this so I’m just speaking generally. Maybe kids think about their own biases. College should stretch and cause you to pause and question. If it’s all comfortable, familiar, and easy are you growing? I can see why it might be extra uncomfortable to kids brought up in homogeneous communities who’ve never been introduced to the concept of privilege. I don’t think it’s about self flagellation at all. It’s about understanding. Just having that awareness can open eyes and help shape decisions later.
There is nothing wrong with awareness but that doesn’t happen through exercises like this. I totally agree with the OP on this point. It was absolutely an exercise in back patting and feel gooding by the college and a devisive exercise for students who all too well understand that people all have individual histories.
If we really want to build bridges between people of different backgrounds this is NOT the way to do it.
Of course there is some privilege that is afforded to white, wealthy people (not just men). It exists. Most of the privilege that white, wealthy kids have is created by higher rates of intact families, access to greater learning opportunities, opportunities to travel, family support for emotional/academic/health issues, access to better employment opportunities, etc. If we want to afford those opportunities to others outside the wealthy, white person community we cannot start by making white, wealthy people feel bad about having those things.
Our efforts are better spent trying to extend those privileges to those who do not have it rather than asking people who do have these advantages to feel guilty (or uncomfortable-choose whatever word you like). Exercises like these cause those with privilege to band together against what they perceive to be an assault on them and their way of life. The goal of those creating a community should be to have those with these privilege to interact more with those who do not, thus affording privilege to a greater number of people. Exercises like this do not push those with privilege to interact more with those without. It pushes those with privilege further into their little bubbles.
IMO this is part of the current trend to label people"us" or “not us.” I see this trend as corrosive. I would like to see colleges bringing people together, not further dividing them.
My firm had a mandatory diversity training exercise about privilege a couple of years ago. To say that I was skeptical and out of sorts is a massive understatement. But you know what? It was done incredibly well and was presented in a positive, uplifting manner - rather than to accuse or tear town, and it was very beneficial and informative. There are choices in how these things can be done and what people take away from them.
My husband and I come from uneducated backgrounds, his was very poor and unstable, so we look at privilege differently now that we have managed to drag ourselves out of the gutter into the solid middle class. Which may not sound like much to educated professionals, but it was an incredible journey for us. I do think there is such a thing as white privilege, and it manifests itself in countless ways. It is right and appropriate to remember that and act accordingly. We grew up and live in a very diverse area and have a diverse family, so it has been a shock in my adult life to realize that the population of white Americans who doesn’t have any meaningful contact with black Americans is pretty darn large. And it’s not in the places one might stereotypically think as being segregated. That’s not been my experience at all, so learning that has informed my views of race and privilege in important ways as I’ve gotten older.
I also think that the two biggest and most important privileges that children can have are two engaged parents and a family that emphasizes education. Without those things, pretty much everything else is impossible to attain.
I have taught TAs how to teach off and on for over three decades. About 10 years ago, I had an African American women describe a freshman activity where they took steps into or out of a circle based on a series of attributes (race, class, athlete, high school characteristics, parents educational status, etc). She had a strong teaching background, and her course evaluations were always great. I am sure she handled it brilliantly for both the students who wound up at the center and those who found themselves on the periphery. Still in a class on pedagogy, we discussed the positives and negatives of such an activity. I told the class that it was not something I would ever do because, in my hands, I thought the negatives would out weigh the positives. Even though it would help those at the edges understand how hard they would have to work to compete (good to know going in) and it would help those in the center to understand their advantages and responsibilities, I discouraged the other TAs from doing the exercise until they had lots of experience AND a clear pedagogical and curricular reason for doing it.
About the time the pedagogy class was discussing how to address freshman, my then-in-middle-school daughter was being teased by a boy she liked (and who probably liked her as they went to the senior prom together). He was speaking to her in Chinglish, drawing attention to her race. She was very hurt by it. I didn’t know at the time. If I had, I would have addressed his parents who would have been appalled.
Flash forward seven years, his freshman year of college included diversity training (whatever that is). He contacted her from across the country and apologized for his insensitivity. He said that he didn’t know about his privilege nor micro-aggression. His 12 y o self embarrassed him horribly. My daughter was so touched that she told me the whole history.
I don’t know enough about what happened in the OP’s child’s activity, but I do know that freshmen have very limited experiences, and when they come to the big university/universe, they need to understand many, many new things. Globalization is real, workplaces are diverse, and the rules of engagement have changed.