survey about privilege

like so much conversation about privilege, this little survey i found at kightp's is filled with its own presumptions. it's totally sideways to where i see my own privilege. ( click if you care; there's also commentary )

that's it, and it's not even all that close to what they have in mind. according to this survey i haven't lived very privileged. and some of what they consider privilege wasn't so in my culture, due to religious twists. and yet i've had enormous privilege they don't even seem to realize exists -- the fact that public education, including at the secondary level was there for me to catch and propel me forward where my parents would have failed is probably the largest single influence on my life. it made everything possible that came afterwards, because i learned to think and speak and act as an educated person.

i can see very clearly how this confuses my doctor. he's giving me samples of the expensive blood pressure med and talks in ways that convey he thinks i am financially strapped -- because i'm fat and grey and dress in sweats and have a missing canine (tooth). but i also speak educated english, and i know my way around the internet, and i clearly understand blood pressure and blood glucose, and i present my numbers in nice little graphs. he doesn't know what to make of me.

there are some instances where people wouldn't think of what i had as privilege, but i do -- working on the farm in the summer was vastly preferable to going to a religious summer camp, for example. not because it wasn't religious (i was still a christian then) but because i learned things that mattered to me, i got to feel accomplished, i was more of an equal than not among the people with whom i worked, and i was much more free than during my regular days. those were some of the best times of my life back then, those working summers.