{"id":4188,"date":"2008-01-07T22:45:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-07T22:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=4188"},"modified":"2017-11-03T15:22:56","modified_gmt":"2017-11-03T20:22:56","slug":"born-with-a-lead-spoon-in-my-mouth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/07\/born-with-a-lead-spoon-in-my-mouth\/","title":{"rendered":"Born With A Lead Spoon In My Mouth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Are you a child of privilege?  Apparently, it&#8217;s all the latest rage for college professors to gin up something to prove that everyone of the appropriate need for guilt feel guilty about their privileges.  Over at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dustbury.com\/backlog\/2008\/01\/privilege_has_its_ra.html\" target=\"_new\">Dustbury<\/a>, he&#8217;s run his own numbers, and that prompted me to run mine:<\/p>\n<ul><b>Bold<\/b> each of the statements that applies:<\/p>\n<p>Father went to college<br \/>\nFather finished college<br \/>\nMother went to college<br \/>\nMother finished college<br \/>\n<b>Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor<\/b> <i>(An uncle, apparently, got a PhD or something and now teaches at a small college or maybe private high school.  Good enough.)<\/i><br \/>\nWere the same or higher class than your high school teachers<br \/>\nHad more than 50 books in your childhood home<br \/>\nHad more than 500 books in your childhood home<br \/>\nWere read children&#8217;s books by a parent<br \/>\nHad lessons of any kind before you turned 18<br \/>\nHad more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18<br \/>\n<b>The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively<\/b> (<i>If they&#8217;re dressed like me and talk like me, how else could they be?)<\/i><br \/>\nHad a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18<br \/>\nYour parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs<br \/>\nYour parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs<br \/>\nWent to a private high school<br \/>\nWent to summer camp<br \/>\nHad a private tutor before you turned 18<br \/>\nFamily vacations involved staying at hotels <i>(We had a family vacation.  Once.)<\/i><br \/>\nYour clothing was all bought new before you turned 18<br \/>\nYour parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them<br \/>\nThere was original art in your house when you were a child<br \/>\nHad a phone in your room before you turned 18<br \/>\n<b>You and your family lived in a single family house<\/b><br \/>\n<b>Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home<\/b> <i>I assume this includes &#8220;had a mortgage on&#8221;.)<\/i><br \/>\nYou had your own room as a child<br \/>\nParticipated in an SAT\/ACT prep course<br \/>\nHad your own TV in your room in High School<br \/>\nOwned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College<br \/>\n<b>Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16<\/b> <i>(After the divorce and moving 400 miles from my father, he flew us up for one summer.  And back, to my mother&#8217;s relief.)<\/i><br \/>\nWent on a cruise with your family<br \/>\nWent on more than one cruise with your family<br \/>\nYour parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up<br \/>\n<b>You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family<\/b><\/ul>\n<p>I guess you wouldn&#8217;t call us privileged.  As for the number of books, I don&#8217;t know what it was; I didn&#8217;t start accumulating books until college, paperbacks mostly.<\/p>\n<p>As for the television in the bedroom in high school, that&#8217;s a big 10-no.  However, when we were in the trailer in middle school, we had one in the room my brother and I shared.  The 6&#215;8 room we shared.<\/p>\n<p>And as for heating bills, that wasn&#8217;t brought up; however, when I was at college, a very hoity Marquette University, when my sociology 001 professor asked what Milwaukee welfare benefits were, I guessed wrongly about $250 a month.  I got that figure from my youth, when my mother worried that a $250 television repair paid for by a gift from more affluent relatives might trigger an investigation for welfare fraud.<\/p>\n<p>So keep that in mind, gentle reader, whenever you miscategorize me as a child of a suburban or upper middle class upbringing: the fact that I dress nicely for work and that I can quote a lot of classical literature belies my true place as white trash turned into art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are you a child of privilege? Apparently, it&#8217;s all the latest rage for college professors to gin up something to prove that everyone of the appropriate need for guilt feel guilty about their privileges. Over at Dustbury, he&#8217;s run his own numbers, and that prompted me to run mine: Bold each of the statements that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quizzes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17219,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4188\/revisions\/17219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}