Class Privilege meme

Via DaisyDeadhead, who apparently is about a year behind the times with this (making me even further behind the times, since I'd not seen it yet):

Introduction:

An activity designed to help the participants gain awareness of the vast range of social class that exists within themselves and others. This has been updated based on the wide range of feedback we received as this was becoming a popular experience.

Equipment:

A big room with space to move for all participants
Chairs to sit for discussion

Rules:

Pay attention to how you feel. Angry, sad, happy, winner, loser . . .
No talking – we will talk about this a lot when it is over
Line up here and take a step forward of about 1 (one) foot or one foot length for every fact that applies to you.

For blogs, bold the following facts that apply to you:

Part I, when you were in college:

Father went to college
Father finished college
Mother went to college
Mother finished college
Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor. (Maternal grandmother was MD - one of the first women to be in the UK!)
Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
Had more than 50 books in your childhood home (Dad loved reading after playing truant to read at the library as a boy - so always acquired more books as life went on)
Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
Were read children's books by a parent (Dad valued reading a lot, so helped me learn to read too - was able to do so because he was unemployed for a lot of my childhood)
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 (instrument lessons provided by the state school system)
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively (difficult to say - I don't identify with any of those portrayed on television)
Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs (I was the last to benefit from the State's payment of tuition fees without cost to the student)
Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs (see above)
Went to a private high school
Went to summer camp
Had a private tutor
If you have been to Europe
Family vacations involved staying at hotels
Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18 (a lot was, but I was the oldest of my family - but my older cousins often gave me hand-me-downs, as I gave my clothes to my younger siblings)
Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them (I don't drive - but neither of my siblings who do drive got a new car)
There was original art in your house when you were a child (only what the kids had produced ourselves!)
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
You and your family lived in a single family house
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
You had your own room as a child (occasionally - but there were never as many rooms as there were siblings)
Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
Had your own TV in your room in High School
Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your family
Went on more than one cruise with your family
Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up (holidays only)
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family

...

Now everyone recognize that you are at the same place academically.
Everyone turn around.
Everyone has permission to talk.
No one has permission to accuse any one or any group of anything.
Everyone must use “I” statements.
Note that the people on one end of the room had to work harder to be here today than the people at the other end of the room. Some of you had lives of more privilege than others. There is no one to blame, it is just the way it is. Some have privilege and some don’t.
(this can be said now or later, I don’t know where it will be appropriate)

Discussion:
What were the feelings that you had during this experience? Who was angry?
(Anger will be a primary emotion at this point.)
What, specifically, makes you angry?
Who are you angry at?

Who was happy?

Summary Statement
This experience was about creating awareness of privilege. What it is, what it does, and what it means. Having privilege does not mean that you worked less hard. All it means is that you had a head start, so maybe it does mean you didn’t have to work as hard . . . .

Homework
During the next week notice how your high school years helped or didn’t help your experience in school/at work . . . .

Explanations and Notes:
All of the step taking was about things not requiring effort on the students’ part, but were things done by others.

~*~

12 points, although as noted, not all of them are comparable between USA and UK - especially talking about paying for university tuition.

Chaser of The Paper Chase added another level-

Part II, in childhood:

If your body does not bear long-term signs of malnutrition. (obesity now caused by constant hunger when younger)
If you had orthodontia.
If you saw a doctor for anything other than emergencies or school-mandated shots. (It was on the NHS, so visiting the doctor was free - unlike the USA)
If you heated your home with clean-burning fuels or had properly vented heating.
If you grew up in a house without vermin.
If you had running water.
If you had a basement or foundation under your house.
If you had an indoor toilet.
If your parents and immediate family were outside the criminal justice system.
If you yourself remained outside the criminal justice system.
If your parents had a new car. (not until I was in my teens, and even then it wasn't owned by them but a lease car from the company)
If you never went barefoot so that you could ’save your shoes for school.’
If your parents never argued in front of you about having enough money for food to last out the month.
If you ate hunted and fished meat because it was a recreational activity rather than as the major way to stock a freezer. (Although - in the UK there really aren't any places where you can go to hunt to stock the freezer; hunting and fishing are only accessible for the very rich)
If your laundry was done at home in a washer rather than in a lavandaria. (Laundromat)
If your hair was cut by a professional barber or hair stylist instead of your parent.

7 points

***

It occurs to me that some of these things are not what I would consider to be associated with class. For example, a lot of proud working class men (and women) went to college, and sought to keep themselves educated later in life. My father was just such a man, and although he did eventually enter the middle classes, when I was young, the collections of books were largely from his growing up and his working class reading habit. Similarly, his class identity and the benefit he received from reading meant that reading was something he wanted to pass on to his children.

Some of them I don't associate with class simply because socialist governments in Britain managed to change the playing field so that education and healthcare were free at point of use when I was growing up - so the government paid my college tuition; the NHS meant I could go to the doctor as often as I needed for frequent check-ups as well as immunisations and so on.

I am not saying "these things don't constitute privilege", because clearly, the things that I have on the lists that others in my society don't are things that have given to me not by my own efforts but by someone else's. But I think that they don't represent class identity or class background - and therefore, cannot be called "class privilege".

On the other hand, in the second list there are things that are so far on the margins of British society as to make their inclusion almost meaningless - again, thanks to the one or two genuine attempts to introduce socialism via the parliamentary route. These include:

If you had running water.
If you had an indoor toilet.
If you never went barefoot so that you could ’save your shoes for school.’

The first two of these I'm pretty sure are required by law to be provided; if a home hasn't got them, it is deemed "not fit for human habitation", and a landlord can be sued for not fixing it right away. I'm fairly sure these regulations have been in force for at least 30 years, probably longer. "Saving your shoes for school" just sounds like something out of Dickens to me. It's probably got some relevance to my Dad's generation, maybe a few years younger than him, but I can't imagine it today. Or rather, I can imagine that there are some families living in absolute poverty in this country for whom this might be a reality(and the government really need to be sorting that out, like, yesterday!), but that it could be common enough to be included in a quiz like this? No way. These three items are straight out of the history books - or more accurately, straight out of the tales told by my Dad and his contemporaries, about their youth.

The item in list one, "You and your family lived in a single family house" also makes my mind boggle. I know that some cultures have an extended-family system, and there are plenty of immigrants from those cultures living as British citizens (and very welcome they are, too). but the housing benefit system (which has recently been changed - I forget what they call it now) coupled with the socialised housing system (which was largely dismantled during the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher's government, alas) serve to keep there from being much need for that kind of thing.

That people in the USA - the richest nation on Earth - could lack these things in sufficient proportions as to make it worthwhile including them in a list like this is just crazy to me. How Americans can bleat about how bad socialism is, when socialist governments are what has dealt with these problems in Europe, is beyond me.