Also, Poor People Are Fat

It's perhaps silly for me, in particular, to accuse other people of being a tad oblivious of their own privilege. Nonetheless...

Megan McArdle objects to the accuracy of a privilege checklist on the grounds that it mistakenly regards going on cruises as a sign of privilege when cruises are, in fact, somewhat gauche. Likewise, having a TV in one's own room is chalked up on the privilege side, while all right-thinking people know that a child's room is meant to be filled with Newbery-award-winning books that will make them cry bitter, meaningful tears all over their Choate applications. And she's right! Cruises are somewhat gauche! I personally disapprove of TVs of any sort in bedrooms! Still, it's hard to get away from the idea that she is missing the point. Once you've gotten to the level at which this objection is germane you have skipped right to the top and are now slicing the very top segment increasingly fine. It strikes me as unlikely that the Indiana State students are really going to be misled by this in any significant way. Oh, shit, that was a totally elitist thing to say, wasn't it.

UPDATE: I've been trying to put my finger on the strangeness. Her objection seems on its face to be: I am obviously a child of privilege but this fact won't be accurately captured by this test, therefore it's worthless. And yet libertarians never admit this sort of thing normally, so it seems to boil down to: there's no such thing as privilege, and even if there were, it would be a good thing, because what these pointy-headed professors regard as 'privilege' is actually hard work and sober-minded choices about what family to be born into. Also, I learned to read when I was very young, entirely on my own and without any assistance from my parents or their cultural milieu. If the children of the poor would take more initiative they too could go to college and be annoyed by soft-headed leftists. God, aren't they so annoying!!

Comments

[FS]

Scalzi's post on this also struck me as very weird, somehow.

[Bloix]

Actually, the John Scalzi post that McM links to is pretty perceptive (although the perceptiveness is due to its link to yet another post, so apparently there's only one idea in this long chaing):

"Elizabeth Bear, in commenting about this exercise, notes: “If I were writing it, it would have things like, ‘Did you receive regular dental care and vaccinations as a child?’ on it.” She’s spot on. The vector of privilege these days is not physical items, but how well one is cared for, or can care for one’s self and family: Whether one has adequate health care, whether one has access to healthy food, whether one’s housing and transportation costs are a not-onerous percentage of the household income, whether one has day care for children, whether one is free of high-interest consumer debt, and whether one can afford to save any money for the future. The privileged are those who have all of those things, or live in households that do. To suggest that having a TV in one’s room as a teen is an indicator of privilege when the real indicator of privilege is whether that teen can get a cracked tooth easily fixed doesn’t merely border on obtuseness, it’s rather emphatically stomping over to the other side of the line and jumping up and down."

I, for example, have a son who has a congenital defect that will cost $20,000 in total to repair, and is not covered by insurance (because it's dental - explain the rationale for that). I can pay for the work he needs and my son will never feel a moment's embarrassment due to his appearance or a second's concern over the cost his care is imposing on the family. That is a true measure of privilege.

[Avram]

Wait, are you actually penalizing Megan for being more honest and perceptive than most libertarians?

[Bloix]

PS- I have to disagree with Brad DeLong's conclusion that Dead Right is the world's best-ever blog post. He was right the first time. Nothing ever has or will beat A Pony.

[Megan McArdle]

It seems a little strange to read a post criticizing me for my oblivion to by own biases, in which the author states that she knows that, despite having stated that I had a privileged childhood, I do not believe in privilege because . . . I am a libertarian. And that while I might appear to be saying what is written in the fairly plain words of the post, this is not true; the author's extraodinary powers of unbiased discernment have allowed her to divine that what I was really writing is a nasty and childish screed that cannot actually be found in the words of the post, or as far as I know of any post I have ever written. Presumably it is simply etched in the stone of my cold, black heart.

[jimbo jones]

Megan, your point seems to be one of two things: 1) This survey is flawed because it's not geared to register particular kind of manhattan prep-school level of elite privilege (at Indiana State!)

[The Modesto Kid]

or...?

[dsquared]

A classic example of "Devastating Critique" in action. That questionnaire looks like it would work just fine in general.

[SJ]

"or...?"

jimbo's missing point 2 seems to be "I'm not a spoiled brat, despite any indications to the contrary", e.g all the indications contained in this bit:

"I can't remember any family vacation that did not involve visiting relatives, or did involve an airline flight. I can think of no way in which this hampered my development as a fully actualized human being, or an economically productive member of society; nor do I think that the fact that I have not been to Disneyland1 materially affected my chances at Harvard2. I'm a child of privilege not because my family gave me fantastic leisure opportunities, but because the circumstances of my birth and upbringing made it relatively easy for me to choose my path in life. Every one of those professors' kids is more privileged, in that sense, than the child of the median car-dealership owner."

[Helen]

This comment on the McArdle thread gets the prize, for me:

It amazes me to see the extent to which academics will go to prattle on about unearned rewards (ie., the result of "privilege") and focus solely on environment, ignoring the far greater contribution from genetics. But I guess it is easier to engender manipulable guilt with "privilege" than with genetics.

I can't wait till they isolate the TV in Bedroom gene, the Professor gene, or the Knowing About Fishing/Hunting gene.

Just as an aside, the author of the privelege checklists, Will Barratt, acknowledges: "I am also thankful Peggy McIntosh for her "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" that is one grandparent of what we produced." Coincidentally, I just put up a post pointing to McIntosh's Knapsack, and I still think it is a better tool than Barratt's.

[Mom]

I was sure you learned to read so early because I was always reading while breast feeding you - and then read aloud to you lots of Frank L. Baum books. Embuing a love of reading by Ozma-mosis