Everybody wanna talk about class and privilege, it seems. This list was originally a staff development exercise on class privilege at Indiana State, and as anyone who ever did the ‘privilege walk’ in a women’s studies or sociology class remembers, some of the responses are comically loaded with denials of privilege.

My family owned 2 homes all my life. One was wherever my dad was working and the other was the family farm which had been in our family for well over 100 years. We lived on or very near big water all my childhood and had boats (yes plural) both sail and power. For a number of years we even owned an island. Yup a for real ‘island’ in the Chesapeake Bay. One plus mile long by about a half mile wide. We went to both public and private schools. We always had very good medical insurance.

But… We all also wore hand-me-downs clothes, we rode hand-me-down bikes, we never vacationed ANYWHERE but the family farm. And those boat(s) we had… we spent far more time working on the engines to keep them running than we did riding around in ‘em. My father kept us long on hugs, but very short on pocket money. We had to earn everything we wanted.

Double-u. Tee. Eff.

Being that we’re mindless followers up in here, we’re going to play this game, too. Yay! More…