So i'm currently doing postgrad physics, in a small university, and my class is very small (10 in my year) so everyone in it i see quite a lot. I really like these people, and can have a good conversation with all of them.
But there is this one guy, T, who gets on my nerves a lot. He's white, from a richish family, straight, male. So he comes from a position of a lot of privilege, which he is very unaware of. He's also quite arrogant, which everyone is aware of and puts up with. I have a class with him and two others so certainly cannot avoid him.
But he makes me so angry sometimes. The first thing that really got me was awhile ago when he posted as his facebook status something about how he wishes he was a non-white disabled foreign woman so he could get some scholarships. Luckily a lot of people were replying to this with a bit of anger. I think I told him if he wanted scholarships he could try getting some better marks and that not being a citizen was the best way to be disqualified from scholarships.
He has brought this issue up again, when i was with him in person, while in a group of friends. The same sort of complaint. I was seeing red. I told him 'I've never gotten a scholarship because I'm a woman, it was always solely on my grades' Now, I don't think this was the best possible response. I don't think there's anything wrong with scholarships for woman, and i think a good defence could have been made about that. But it was all I could come up with at the time, and i hope was better than nothing.
There's other stuff the worst of which was when i was talking to one of the other members of my class (also female) and him, and he was complaining about the assignment. We have a female lecturer for that class, and T didn't like her. But then he said to us 'so we worked out the makr distribution: you get an A+ cause you actually know whats going on and are female, L (my female friend), gets an A, cause she's female, and me and S (male classmate) will get A-'s.'
I was too shocked to say anything. Haven't really talked to him since. I just don't want to get into a conversation that makes me angry for the rest of the day. Another classmate told me he thought i was ignoring him and didn't understand why. Is there anyway i can let him see whats angering me without making me seem like i'm the one being stupid in the eyes of my classmates? is there anyway i could make him stop?
The other thing is that given he's coming from a privileged position, and he gets ok marks, and is doing a subject that makes people automatically think you're a genius (yes, i get that a lot. It's kinda creepy), i know he'll end up in a position of power of women and people of colour and other less privileged people eventually.
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The only way you'll be able to get him to understand why those scholarships exist is to get him to understand his privilege. It's not that he doesn't understand racism, ableism, etc, because he's probably been told over and over again that it exists, but privilege is the other half of all the -isms. He's probably been raised to believe in meritocracy, he might even have a parent or two that were raised in relative poverty but who managed to climb their way to a relaxing lifestyle.
His real roadblock to understanding privilege will probably be because of the meritocracy issue. When you bring it up, he'll probably take it to mean you don't think he works hard. It's not that he's not running the race just as hard as anyone else, it's just that he got to start before the other runners or he doesn't have as many hurdles.
I know I made a couple assumptions, so if the meritocracy thing is untrue, I understand.
He may be a serious jerk, but I choose not to invalidate the frustrations of 'privileged' people who are exempt from many scholarships that are available to people of other groups. Just because you are white, male, and straight, does not mean you automatically have the means to afford whatever you want, including higher education. I don't think it helps to have the idea that if you are white or male you have nothing to complain about. Yes, it means that racism or sexism are two less things that you have to worry about, but that doesn't make the whole world your oyster and it doesn't mean you aren't deserving of assistance. I think that believing otherwise contributes to more resistance among privileged groups when it comes to empathizing with less advantaged groups. Being part of a privileged group doesn't pay your bills and you can't eat privilege for dinner or put it in your gas tank. I can see how some guy (not talking about this particular one in the OP) who is white and male but comes from a very poor background could get sick of hearing how easy he has it when there are no programs really available to help him due to something none of us can help (his race and sex). Him being white doesn't mean he has any particular influence or anyone pulling strings on his behalf.
That's all very nice, except that nobody said any of the things you're trying to claim that we said. The idea of privilege isn't to say that white upper-class males have it easy or have everything handed to them; of course it's difficult to complete a graduate program in physics no matter who you are, and I'm sure this guy isn't sailing through it. But that bit you trivialized- you know, the "not having to worry about racism or sexism" part- is a very real advantage in many ways.
I also like how you left class privilege out of it and made it seem as though we were saying that he was privileged solely because he was white, even though the OP specifically mentioned this guy's class privilege. One thing to remember is that all forms of privilege operate in relation to the others. Is a poor white auto worker automatically better off in all ways than an upper-class black lawyer? Obviously not (although there are parts of even this that are arguable). But you can be damn sure he has an advantage over the black guy working next to him on the assembly line.
Precisely.
"Privilege" is merely a shorthand to describe the ABSENCE of extra debilitations, not to suggest an affirmative glut of lucky breaks or good fortune (although those may also be present in some).
Hence, that European-ancestry assembly line worker you talk about: it's not that his life has been a dish of peppermint ice cream. Perhaps it's been a few circles of hell. The point is that the Haitian female worker next to him on the line has an extra few circles to grapple with than he does.
Both are given the short end of the stick in life; it's just that he has one LESS burden to shoulder with regards to gender and ethnicity. (And, additionally, SHE might have one less burden than HIM in regards to some other factor).
Best breakdown of "privilege" I've ever heard.
Thank you. As an ethnic minority who has both benefited and suffered from a variety of social privileges, I have thought a whole heck of a lot about this concept.
The word itself is such a minefield--after all, "privilege" already has another, literal meaning that you can look up in the Webster's dictionary...and it's certainly not what humanists (feminists/womanists, anti-racists, etc.) mean when they use it.
There's a very long thread about the word in My Profile, under my posts, if you want to read a variety of people's thoughts on the subject.
He sounds annoying, alright. In my case I would play it up and "rub it in his face" how I'm getting a trillion dollars a month (a blatant lie but who cares) just to piss him off. Probably not the best strategy :) Ignoring him is perfectly understandable, and probably healthy. If he or anyone gets in your face about ignoring him, you can tell them you have the right to hang out with or ignore anyone you like, which is true. And if they want to know why you ignore him, tell him/tem exactly what you just said. You have the right and the option to just walk away after if they insist on getting in your face again. You have the right to your opinion. You have the right not to listen to others who piss you off.
Far as the issue of scholarships go...
I personally find it extremely unfair that a person can get a scholarship (mainly, if not exclusively) because of their gender/race.
(note: I do realize that there are academic qualifications to be met for race/gender based scholarships)
Supposing you have x, and y, both attempting to enter z university. Y has better grades, but not good enough to get an academic scholarship; x happens to be a minority, so (s)he gets a scholarship.
So what does this mean? Basically it means that if Y wanted to get a scholarship, (s)he would have to work twice as hard to get it, while X is being rewarded for being a certain gender/race etc.
Is this fair? No its not. Of course it isnt fair that there are less minorities in universities, but you cant make up for it by rewarding those minorities for doing less than others. Two wrongs dont make a right.
First of all, being a minority is NOT all one has to do to be awarded with scholarships that are based on race or ethnicity. It's not as easy as x didn't work hard, but is a minority, so (s)he automatically gets into college.
I had to laugh when the boyfriend of a friend of mine kept complaining because he couldn't get into college because he "wasn't a minority or a girl." Bullshit. He didn't get into college because he skated through high school, getting passed through classes because he was on the football team, didn't learn anything, cheated off his girlfriend, couldn't write, and bombed the SAT.
Also, I teach at the college level and I've noticed that the students who have benefited from scholarships (including those based on race and ethnicity) are the hardest workers in my classes and often do the best at the end of the semester.
"First of all, being a minority is NOT all one has to do to be awarded with scholarships that are based on race or ethnicity. It's not as easy as x didn't work hard, but is a minority, so (s)he automatically gets into college."
As I said in my post, I realize that minority scholarships have academic standards.
What I was basically complaining about was that a person could get ahead not because of effort but physicality. (How is this so dissimilar from few women attending universities early last century- when students didnt get ahead based on effort but their physicality?)
Ill use my school's system as an example, just because thats what I know about.
Supposing student X with a 33 ACT score and minority student Y with a 28 ACT score both apply to a university. X gets a full scholarship because of his grades, Y gets a 3/4 scholarship because of hers. But then Y gets another scholarship- not for effort/talent/genius/etc, but for having a vagina.
So what happened there? X worked the harder, and Y worked less. As far as justice goes, should X and Y recieve equal scholarship? Of course not. And gender should never come into play when giving out scholarships!
But you know what else comes into play with college acceptance? Legacies. And you know who has the most of those? White males. Because women and minorities weren't allowed to attend those schools in the past so they can't be favored that way.
I'm not saying there is an easy answer, it is a very complicated issue, but you're just choosing to ignore the years and years of racism and sexism that kept women and minorities out of college and the isms that are still in place today that don't necessarily foster the best learning environment for them. Just pretending that no matter what we can all get the same scores and grades if we try the same amount is naive.
But that was then; this is now. Would sexism against the men of today make up for the sexism against the women of yesterday? No, it doesnt. A true feminist isnt going to be sexist against males, that is unjust and hypocritical.
You clearly missed the part of my comment where I said "and the isms that are still in place today." You're kidding yourself if you think we've all moved on and everything is hunky dorey now.
I certainly don't think that sexism/racism has disappeared. What I do think is that the sexism/racism of the past does not legitimize using sexism/racism, and that the sexism/racism of today does not legitimize using sexism/racism.
Yes, the students are the victims. But who are the perpertrators? Teachers, parents, government officials, etc? Definitely not the students! They should not be the ones to suffer from more sexism/racism because they have gone through it already.
Sexism and racism have definitely not disappeared. And providing scholarships where one of the criteria requires a recipient to be a member of an underrepresented group is not “sexism/racism”.
Organizations that provide scholarships for women and minorities don’t do it because they hate the menz. They do it because they are looking at the issue from a macro-level perspective. They see that in certain fields (science, math, etc) women and minorities continue to be underrepresented. They look at research on the “leaky pipeline” and realize that there are many points where girls and women drop out because they don’t feel like they belong. They realize that these women and minorities are in an environment where they may not be receiving the same level of support as their white male students and colleagues. So these organizations are giving them an incentive to continue on, providing support they need to overcome the challenges of being in an environment where you do not always feel welcome.
As you point out, the perpetrators are the people in the power: teachers, officials, etc. Women and minorities are never going to occupy those positions of power in fair numbers if they don’t receive support as students.
Please explain to me how legacies favor men over women.
I don't think it's that simple. I was lucky enough to attend a good middle and high school (public, but on the "richer" part of town) and the reason I got into college and got my scholarship is because of the excellent educational opportunities I had.
Suppose I got a slightly better GPA and scored higher on the SAT than a peer that went to a high school with high teacher turn over rates, out dated textbooks, no funding for arts/music classes, large classes, etc. Did I really work harder? Or is it because I had good teachers and tons of resources at my disposal? I'm going to say the latter and that my peer is equally deserving of a scholarship.
Finally, considering my school was 90% white kids and the schools on the south side are mostly Latino, which tend to be the poorly funded schools scholarships offered on the basis of race really don't bother me. I was still able to get financial aid and scholarships. Financial aid is based on your income, not your race, and I was offered a decent amount because it was shown in my FAFSA that my mom does not make enough to send me to school even though I got to go to the nicer high school. Most of the university based scholarships are need based or merit based. Private scholarships tend to favor race or gender.
But how is that going to help? If minorities receive a substandard education from K-12, how are college scholarships going to help that? Shouldn't the money be going towards giving minorities proper education instead of trying to fix the problem after the fact?
A lot of minorities go to public schools that are governmentally funded. Yes, public schools that are mostly minority should have equal resources as public schools that are mostly white, but they're not. It's because most school systems get funds from property taxes from residents in the area. Therefore, it remains that low-income (which often correlates with minority) areas have very under funded schools.
Scholarships are private funds. They're awarded based on the person who's PAYING them. With minority scholarships, it's often being paid by organizations that that recognize the minority-low income-poor schools correlations. I promise that a white kid graduating from an affluent high school did NOT work just as hard as poorer minority kid who graduated from an under funded school.
For my own experience, I went to a predominantly white school in an affluent town. I worked really hard, graduated, then went to a mostly white, affluent, private college. I worked really hard there and went to graduate school in a public college. There, I met fellow grad students who had to fight against poverty, gang violence, language barriers, and racism to get to graduate school. I worked my ass off to get to grad school. I don't think I worked half as hard as they did, even with the scholarships a lot of them earned based on their ethnicity.
Test scores are not indicative of how hard a person worked to get where they are.
"With minority scholarships, it's often being paid by organizations that that recognize the minority-low income-poor schools correlations."
But they are helping too late. Yes, a minority student may have gotten a poor K-12 education; but giving them money later isnt going to erase that substandard education; all it could do is bring them into a school system which they are unfit for (due to their poor previous education).
Why dont these organizations recognize the problem and then try to help the minority/low income children get a better education?
"I promise that a white kid graduating from an affluent high school did NOT work just as hard as poorer minority kid who graduated from an under funded school."
You do, do you? That is discrimination, and racism. A person's income status or race is NOT relevant to their diligence or perseverance.
That would cost non-profit (and some for profit) organizations millions of dollars as opposed to a few thousand per scholarship for them to send a few kids to school. Realistically, they cannot afford to revamp the entire public school system which is what would need to be done.
Eh? Why can't they just offer scholarships to those children to attend better elementary/middle/high schools?
How do you determine when a child is 5 or 6 years old which one "deserves" to attend a better school and get a better education?
You don't. You give them equal educations.
?
How? If poor folks can't afford good public schools due to property taxes, and rich folks can, and rich folks are also the ones making the scholarships, where does the money come from?
Equal K-12 education sounds nice, but rich folks would never allow it. It would cost enough that there would be a massive backlash against it.
Or, to put it succinctly, which rich person is going to sacrifice their mediocre kid's college spot for a slightly less mediocre poor kid?
Not a one.
I still am rather confused...
Are you saying that, while "the rich people" can afford to give out scholarships for college, they cannot do the same for grammar and high school? A better public school is usually just a bus ride away, with tuition costing just the same?
That's exactly what I'm saying.
Good public schools are good because of the funding per student they get. Therefore simply busing in all the poor kids doesn't work. Instances like this have resulted in white flight and a degradation of a school's budget.
Going to a good public school out of district can cost as much as a year at public college, because you have to pay to go to public school out of district, just like private school.
Your solution is also hard to enact because it's difficult to select students at the age of 5 or 6, and even then those scholarships won't change the other class advantages that feed into education.
Wealthier parents tend to be more literate and have more spare time with their kids. Therefore those kids are getting more education per day than the average poor kid. And that's not even counting summer, where rich kids get an even bigger edge. Summer educational programs (which are usually expensive) and attention (which requires leisure time for the parents) give rich kids the chance to advance educationally over the summer, when poor kids are likely to stagnate or even regress in front of a television or simply hanging out.
Your "solutions" here are impossible to enact, and are therefore not solutions at all.
Crap, I pressed "like" instead of "reply." Anyway, now you're going in circles and not making any sense. You said "Why can't they just offer scholarships to those children to attend better elementary/middle/high schools?" So I asked how do you determine which 5 or 6 year old get these scholarships? How do you deem at such a young age who is worthy of having a good education and whatnot? You then replied with "You don't. You give them equal educations." That's not possible nor is it answering my question. There is not enough money to give EVERY CHILD a scholarship. Nor is there enough to make every school equal as has been pointed out. So I ask again, who gets these scholarships?
Well, obviously not every child can receive the scholarship to a better education. But then again, can every high school graduate receive a scholarship? Of course not. I still do not get what you are saying; this scholarship program does not benefit all who deserve a scholarship, who would expect different for younger recipients?
It is not a perfect system at all but at least after high school scholarship programs have things to go on: grades, test scores, extracircular activites, etc... When kids are 5 or 6 years old there is nothing to go on at all. It would essentially be picking names out of a hat as to who deserves a better education.
Well, obviously not every child can receive the scholarship to a better education. But then again, can every high school graduate receive a scholarship? Of course not. I still do not get what you are saying; this scholarship program does not benefit all who deserve a scholarship, who would expect different for younger recipients?
Yes, we should be fixing the problem before the fact. But even if we fixed it today and made every school equal there would still be kids graduating right now that did not benefit from these changes. So, while it may not be the best solution it does open up opportunities to students that have had to work twice as hard as their peers that got a better education from the start. Therefore, until we start making schools more equal, I'm not against it. Especially since many of these scholarships are from private organizations that can fund whatever they want to fund.
One of the most important advantages of being a member of a privileged group is that the people with power who can influence your life will naturally feel more comfortable with you and find it easier to get along with you because you have similar backgrounds (and you're likely to be more relaxed and comfortable with them in turn). One thing to notice about this advantage; it won't help you nearly as much if you're a jerk, as in that case the similarity of backgrounds is unlikely to prevent the people who matter from disliking you. It sounds as if this factor may be operative in the present case, and may be making privilege less visible to the individual you describe.
Been there, done that (physics grad school, that is, and all the jerky males therein). The most important thing in this circumstance is YOU. Don't waste your time on this jerk. It isn't your job to educate him or change his mind or anything. The most important thing here is that you continue to stay strong, stay in your program, and don't let it affect your self-confidence as a physicist in any way. This guy has a problem with women - full stop. Believe me, I know all too well how tempting it is to get into it with a classmate like this who is deliberately trying to provoke you. But it's really not worth it - he will waste your time, your energy, and he wants to make you feel bad, make you feel like you don't deserve to be there. The best thing you can do is when he brings it up, simply say, "I'm not going to discuss this with you." And turn the conversation back to the problem set or research. Shut it down. I have seen far too many of my female peers leave physics, and too often it's because they think they can't do it, which isn't true. Harrassment from jerks like this is the reason they leave. Don't give him what he wants, which is a reaction, and focus on your studies. The real agenda this guy has is to try to make you feel insecure; he doesn't want a rational discussion about the merits of different scholarships, blah blah blah. So don't waste your time.
And by the way, good job - we need more women in physics! :) Hang in there. This kind of hazing is the hardest part.
I've also heard a lot of male students at my University complain about a female professor being sexist and using that as an excuse for their poor grades. My boyfriend has even said that before but at least I can just tell him to grow up and take responsibility for his own bad grades. (We are very brutally honest with eachother :P) I really don't understand how that excuse has become such a trend.
I've seen a female professor intentionally ignore male students, explicitly state she did this because the students were male (she had to make up for all the oppression women had faced), and absolutely nothing happened to her.
While I'm not trying to say it's never sexist to accuse a teacher of showing favoritism to a gender, I have to agree with TD that there ARE professors and teachers out there, both male and female who show preference to either given gender. That is simply a truth and it's wrong to dismiss that offhandedly because a male student happens to be accusing a female teacher of sexism. Women can be sexist too.
That being said, it is far more difficult to show grade favoritism in the hard sciences where answers are straight forward, than in the soft sciences and humanities where one person might think a paper is awesome and another thinks it's shit. Given that, I find it hard to believe that in THIS particular situation the professor is showing favoritism to female students simply because that is hard to pull off in a hard science.
This is why it feels kind of uncomfortable commenting on feministing.
I never said in my short comment that I didn't believe sexism existed from male or female professors toward their students. It is unwise to speak in absolutes especially as this deals with individual cases of sexism. I stated that I have been noticing a trend at my University. The trend is that I hear more comments from the male students about their female professors being sexist than I do of female students calling their male professor sexist. And they do so because they are unhappy with their grades. I don't dismiss a male's comments of sexism offhandedly, I know how to be objective and I go to a moderately sized University so more often than not I have had the professor they are complaining about and I can usually infer the motivations of the student to make those comments because I know them.
My comment wasn't a scientific observation, I just found it interesting and maybe it's a good topic for research.
Just because there are situations of sexism that do exist in the classroom also doesn't mean that some are fabricated. And I am well aware that women can be sexist too, I felt like that comment was belittling to my intelligence as a fellow feminist on these boards.
To all the people saying that they don't agree with scholarships just for a particular group: i can see your points, and i have mixed feelings about those sort of scholarships, but are unwelling to dismiss them.
Where i live the major scholarships (the government and university ones aren't like that however. (though this has changed for undergrads this year, stupid government destroying scholarships). Or for the field you work in, so there are good scholarships for vets, doctors and teachers.
I believe there are government funded scholarships for the native people here, but as i wouldn't qualify, i've never looked to see how many and how good they are.
And i totally utterly agree on scholarships for disabled people, as it must be so much harder to manage through aspects of university with some disabilities.
The thing is i think all the scholarships for woman are made by private groups,and there are not huge numbers of them, so its not like he was left out of any huge opportunity. Most people i know got the general government or uni funded scholarships.
This makes me think of a line in the book "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson about a computer programmer who is convinced that he is too smart to be sexist. I did computer science and physics classes in college (at a large university) and this guy was everywhere. I think they think they are so smart and really have "no problems" with women in their classes, that they can say anything they want in the name of honest academics. It kind of reeks of the "but some of my best friends are black!" line. The best way to deal with these men in my experience is to not back down. Do your best regardless of how ridiculous they act. An occasional "shut up" or "don't you think that's a bit sexist?" will sometimes work. After going to law school though, I think some of them might do it just because they like to get a rise out of people.
Postgrad? When do they finally teach you that "I" when referring to oneself should be capitalized? This looks more like the ranting of a third grader than an educated person. How do you expect people to take you seriously?
For crying out loud! Grammar attacks? Really? This is a community blog. She's not getting graded on this post.
If you don't have anything to say about the actual content of the post maybe you should not comment at all.
That was completely rude and uncalled for and totally detracts from the content of the OP.
I actually work for a public university in an admissions capacity. The scholarships we award are entirely academically based. You have to have a certain GPA and a certain ACT/SAT score. Any other scholarships students can get are either private or funded by special interest groups. And you have to apply like hell for those. Sometimes you have to be the descendant of a Norwegian basket weaver. Sometimes you have to be the grandchild of a Post-It note maker. It all depends. Public universities don't give two shits if you're male or female, Asian or Scottish. They care that you and your awesome scores will make their school look more competitive. T's just whining so he doesn't have to own up to not doing his best.