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Sigh. I should have known….
From my online course, in the first “Discussion forum” section. Slightly edited to protect the privacy of the teacher. (I deleted her sample answers)
This will be the only discussion in which you will not be graded on how well you back up your opinions with information from our readings. Therefore, there are no right answers here. What you will be graded on is how thoroughly you try to engage, and how respectfully you respond to others. Importantly, this introduction post is optional for 1% extra credit. This will be the only extra credit opportunity offered throughout the semester and I do not bump up grades that are close to the cut off because I offer this opportunity. I would strongly advise taking advantage of this early extra credit opportunity in case you need it later to move from a 79% to a 80%, for example.
First, I’d like to start off with introductions. So please introduce yourself to the class! Some points you may want to discuss include:
- Where you are from
- Your preferred name
- Your year attending [COLLEGE]
- Your major
- Why you are taking this course
- Fun facts
Next, I’d like you to talk a little bit about privilege, and what your areas of privilege are. This is also in the interest of getting to know a little about the context of our class. We all have areas of privilege (e.g., white privilege, male privilege, able-bodied privilege, etc.) It is important that we are aware of our own sources of privilege, and how they affect the way we interact with the world. For example, in the context of this class, I have educational privilege. That means, in this situation, that the material we read is familiar to me, and the academic style of writing is fairly easy to understand. I don’t have the added burden of trying to get used to a new format of the way information is presented in order to understand that information. Me being aware of my educational privilege helps me to engage with others in a more useful way, instead of assuming that my experiences are the same as everyone else’s, and therefore our reactions to our experiences should be, too.
Why is this important, and what does it have to do with developmental psychology? Let me be clear: the purpose of this is NOT to make us all feel guilty about our privilege; that wouldn’t be useful. Rather, the purpose is that we start each conversation from a place of awareness, which breeds understanding and compassion. We are going to be debating some potentially heated topics in this course. It is REQUIRED that we ALL engage with one another respectfully. I will ask each of you to try and see others’ perspectives, while arguing for your own (in other words, it’s not an “either/or” type of scenario; refusing to look objectively at the other side does not show strength in your argument).
So I have a few options here.
- I can skip the optional post and the opportunity for extra credit. Probably the wisest option.
- Post some vague word-salad about advantages in life that I am grateful for, and that others might not have (Which is I think what the question is really getting at, albeit in a very “Woke” manner.)
- Post about my philosophy of “Privilege.” Not that I have a fully fleshed out philosophy there, but I can at least say that I am a sinful human, who, from my state of depravity, is likely to treat those who are different from her negatively.
- Drop the class and find another online course. (Inconvenient, if not quite difficult, at this point.)
The assignment is due at midnight on Monday.
Published in General
I’d go with option 1.
Yeah. I do not think the exercise at its base is objectionable. But I would so prefer “State a bias you have that has tripped you up in the past.” Or something like that.
It’s a psych class. Yeah, it certainly not the most objectionable of assignments, but “Fingernails on a Chalkboard” describes it well.
You have a point. I saw the word “Privilege” and up went my defenses.
I really like that phrase–“Bold without being belligerent.” Not agreeing, but not arguing with the prompt, either. Just answering honestly in a way that doesn’t accept the idea of privilege.
The world has only been this hell of wokeness a short time. (Since 2013/2014??) In that short time, I have discovered that people like your teacher are authoritarians, and that they will sniff you out even if you do your best to lie low. Bland and noncommittal gratitude I say.
The word “privilege” comes from Latin (via French) and means “private law”. Thus, reasonable examples of privilege would be the the special rights enjoyed by the nobility whereby a noble could kill a commoner and suffer no punishment while a commoner who merely struck a noble could be put to death. The left deliberately confuses “privilege” with “advantage” and “good fortune”: they use the false concept of privilege as mere advantage to get us to accept the term, and then use the concept of privilege as private law in order to condemn us as being guilty of terrible things.
I’m blessed with an apparently rare tendency to remain un-offended in situations in which no sane person would be actually trying to offend me specifically, and no reasonably intelligent person would be deliberately speaking in a disparaging way about people of any race, religion, sex or gender orientation, class, physical appearance, or age.
I’m also privileged to have had opportunities to listen to, or read, well intentioned people who were’t so fearful of offending others that they couldn’t plainly speak, or write, what they thought.
(I’d type out the above. Delete it. Go with option 1.)
Because it’s virtual, the option of blowing up the school cafeteria is off the table?
That’s the only rational response.
If Dill is an undergraduate, she might not have been born in the 20th century! ;-)
Fair point, but 21st works just as well in that sentence. Maybe better even.
I know. I’m just always amazed that (for example) the ’80s started 40 years ago. #OldPerson
I think you’ve made a really interesting point about the subtle shift in meaning that makes “privilege” so problematic. It seeks to turn an acknowledgement of reality “chance has provided me with certain advantages” into almost the claim of a character flaw – as though there’s something illegitimate or untoward about them.
It’s a lot like “systemic racism” which seems to arise as much as anything from the fact that more white parents than black ones choose to marry before having children. But as a white child of an intact family that fact makes me a participant in systemic racism. And I’m like – hey, all I did was get born. I had no choice in the matter. Don’t call me a racist.
You and me both. I was drunk for most of the 80s.
Perhaps put that into your answer (unless you do option one).
I posted my response
https://ricochet.com/795266/what-i-posted-on-my-privilege/
It’s a beautiful, gracious response to the professor’s snoopy question.
Thank you.
It is definitely a trap, but it might be a trap for the strident and vicious rather than the non-PC; a foray into debate so as to establish rules of debate.
But I wouldn’t bet on it, you center-right hatemonger.
🤣
There is another option: Lie. Create a fictional world where you, the writer, are an oppressed victim of the hierarchy.
Perhaps you’re a non-binary individual who grew up burdened by the weight of your parent’s middle class values and heterodox belief system.
If the professor wants to live in a dream world of privilege then you should make up your own world.