Getting Your Privilege Checked

John Rawls, the author of A Theory of Justice, believes that the way to determine how to act morally in our interactions with others is by abstracting ourselves from our particular interests and desires. As part of his second principle, he also asks society to adjust in a way that benefits the most disadvantaged.

A popular term circulating the internet, especially in what are called 'Social Justice Blogs', came into being years after the beginning of Rawlsian influence in philosophy. The term, called "Check Your Privilege", merged from both social theorists and tumblr online activists alike. The term is often used in online discussions as a reminder to the participants that their own personal attributes and experiences (wealth, power, intelligence, race, religion, etc) cannot apply to arguments on justice or other political topics.

In our course, we discussed the fairness of University admissions. What if the admission process was reformed in a way that attempted to completely assess privilege, so that all students would have no advantage other than their own academic merit?

Here, we checked our privilege using a totally accurate, sophisticated test at:

http://helloquizzy.okcupid.com/tests/the-social-privilege-test

Take the test yourself and give us your two-cents in the comments?

Michael:

Now you have the chance to speak on your own behalf. How accurate, do you think, was this test based on the results?

I felt that the check your social privilege quiz was an interesting exercise. As a white male from the east coast, I was not too surprised that I scored highly on the quiz. However, there are aspects of the test that I still question. Since the source does not provide information about the weight of each question, I assume that each question is weighted equally in the determination of one’s privilege. With that being said, I do not think all of these questions are equal. Questions such as “how attractive are you?” and “have you ever held a menial job, such as working in a fast food restaurant?” are not equivalent to questions concerning family income. Additionally, as one of our fellow classmates noted during discussion, “different races do not mean different lifestyles.” The various questions about race and ethnicity throughout the quiz make me question whether or not a tool such as this would be useful with respect to college admissions.   

A large number of the questions are actually very similar to the questions UM asks in their college admissions (although UM doesn't ask you to rate your own attractiveness). If we had a better version of this, would it be better if UM took privileges into account?

If some of the flaws I noted above could be examined and minimized, I think it could be beneficial for privilege to be taken into account to some extent. I believe that privilege should be taken into consideration to even the playing field between applicants, so that students from all walks of life can be give equal opportunities to succeed. However, I worry that this criteria can easily be abused, where privileged students will begin to be punished for their upbringing, and would strongly urge the university to guard against this if implementing a privilege based criteria in their admissions.

Let's pull a Rawls and pretend we know nothing of our privileges, wealth, intelligence, race, gender, etc.... Let's say the state had the power to collect very powerful data about you and could collect this kind of information. Would factoring this into public university admissions be fair?

From a moral standpoint, I believe this system would be fair. As I noted above, it would make sense to factor privilege into college admissions to even the playing field between applicants. Ideally, this criteria could be used to help identify those applicants who are truly the most deserving of acceptance. John Rawls argues that “Everyone should have a fair and equal opportunity to be among the best-qualified applicants for positions of economic and social power.” He further defines “fair” and “equal” by stating that, “Chances to acquire cultural knowledge and skills should not depend upon one's class position, and so the school system, whether public or private, should be designed to even out class barriers (p.63).” From this, it seems that Rawls would argue that this system would be moral, as it would help to even out class barriers that exist on college campuses.

Anna:

How accurate do you feel this kind of test was?

I feel that the test was relatively accurate for what it was testing. I wouldn’t say that I have been excessively “privileged” or “underprivileged”, depending on the definition of privilege. This test seemed to focus on things that are unchangeable, such as race, beauty, and height, which I do not believe are accurate measures to test privilege. However, in terms of my upbringing, such as how well my parents were able to support me, my education, etc., I feel that the test was relatively accurate because for most of my life, my family has been able to support me well. However, the problem with the test is that because the quizzer does not know me personally, they don’t know the circumstances of my upbringing; for instance, although my parents are well-off now, the quizzer wouldn’t know the struggles that my family went through financially and culturally as immigrants to the U.S. when I was first born. Although this is just one example, I feel that it highlights a more important issue in the subjective definition of “privilege”. For this reason, I believe that the test is accurate for what it is, but in terms of assessing an individual’s actual “privilege”, it is flawed.

If we had a better version of this, would it be better if UM took privileges into account?


Yes, I think it would be better if UM took privileges into account. However, I feel that in order for UM to more accurately assess privilege in their college admissions, the university should focus less on inborn attributes (mainly race / ethnicity) and focus more on factors that would affect an individual’s ability to get into the university – where the applicant lives (affluent / poor neighborhood), how many children are in the family (more kids = more money going towards college tuition, may deter some parents from sending their kids to more expensive schools), the kind of schools they went to, etc. This way, admissions would be tailored to help those who were brought up in situations that would restrict them from receiving a proper education. For instance, those who grew up in a poorer neighborhood might have gone to a bad school and received a poor education, affecting their performance on standardized tests like the ACT or SAT, therefore affecting their admission into university. An improved privilege test should account for factors like this so that the less advantaged would be better off without affecting the more advantaged.

 Would factoring this into public university admissions be fair?

On a moral basis, factoring privileges into college admissions would be fair because under Rawls, our social system should be blind to factors such as privilege except in the situation where social and economic inequalities are “to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged”. In this case, the privileges in question should be ones that put certain groups in a less advantaged position than others for admission into a public university. This should not be confused with general privileges, such as gender, race, religion, or anything that may put some above others societally, but not in terms of college admissions. Like I mentioned above, the relevant social and economic inequalities should be ones that affect education, such as the kind of school an applicant went to or learning disabilities. Under Rawls, an admissions system that ignores certain factors and focuses on others would satisfy both the veil of ignorance, which discounts irrelevant factors, and the difference principle, which would mitigate the social and economic disparities among applicants.

Andrea:

Now you have the chance to speak on your own behalf. How accurate, do you think, was this test based on the results?

  I think part of the difficulty with these kind of evaluations is that this test has a great amount of subjectivity. Much of the context is very American and I personally spent much of my time living in Indonesia. For example, all my grandparents being college-educated doesn't mean it concludes that my privilege score goes way upward - in the context of their country, it's sort of what they had to do to survive and no American and other country's college systems are 'created equal'. Also, my race held much more weight than a question that asked if I lived in a "3rd world" country (I did) for a different privilege test. That's kind of strange.

  Another instance of weird test format was the 'check your privilege' test that has been popular on Buzzfeed lately. Most people scored 'underprivileged' because the test format was a checklist that asked you to check any disadvantage you've experienced. Interestingly, most people (that is, most people who are procrastinating their homework on Buzzfeed) could identify with about the same number of problems listed, even if those problems were different. It's messy.

When it comes to the assessment of privilege, how much we should factor in 'what were you born with' vs. 'what do you have now'? If the test had evaluated the circumstances I was born with vs. the privileges I have now... well I think would be a very different result. I grew up under terrible political unrest in Indonesia's upheaval of President Suharto's and my family and I suffered a lot in our transition to a life in America. But now, I'm writing this response as a relatively privileged student at UM. There's both work and luck in that. Based on all those little details and those subjective details all people experience in their lives, I'm not so sure a test like this can be consistent.

A large number of the questions are actually very similar to the questions UM asks in their college admissions (although UM doesn't ask you to rate your own attractiveness). If we had a better version of this, would it be better if UM took privileges into account?

That's a tough question. I think it's okay, so long as we take into consideration what the goals of the institution are. If UM's goal is to provide disadvantaged students with a better future, then of course we take privilege into account. If UM's goal is to compete with Harvard or Stanford by admitting and graduating the academically 'strongest' students, then perhaps only pure academic merit could be considered. In the end, UM is a public institution whose goals are, or were meant to, serve that of the community so its probably up to public interest to balance that. Just my thoughts.

Let's pull a Rawls and pretend we know nothing of our privileges, wealth, intelligence, race, gender, etc.... Let's say the state had the power to collect very powerful data about you and could collect this kind of information. Would factoring this into public university admissions be fair?

Aside from being a scenario allowing a great invasion of privacy (though certainly not impossible with the technology of today), I don't see how that could be fair even if I individually would have benefitted from it. But it also depends on what how we factor it in admissions. Thinking from the original position, a federally mandated affirmative action policy applied to colleges or other institutions could pose a violation of Rawl's first principle of economic liberties or distribution of personal liberty. Equality wouldn't be satisfied if we reserved admission or held quotas in universities for any certain group. Competition and benefits would be compartmentalized for certain groups unequally with the rest of the population and thus wouldn't be accepted from an original position. However, I think it would be fair to admit applicants that have achieved the exact same academic merits of others but came from a life of lower privilege. From what I can remember writing my essays for admission here, the University of Michigan does compare the challenges that their applicants have faced in their consideration.

And that's concludes our post! Have you checked your privilege? Let us now in the comments below!