I don’t understand why it’s so hard for people to admit that the phrase “Check your privilege” has evolved so that it now has multiple meanings. Sometimes it’s used in its original form; sometimes it’s just thrown at someone to mean “shut up”.
A lot of people have no trouble understanding this in a different context. Take the word “thug”. Its original meaning was “a violent criminal”, and a lot of people use it this way. However, some people throw it at around as a loose synonym for the n word. (Hip-hop artists of course use it in yet another way).
When I hear the phrase “check your privilege,” I instantly think, “count your blessings.” It’s a reminder that one’s point of view comes from getting to live a lovely life that many just can’t experience. First World Problems, so to speak.
It is great good fortune to carry some privileges, and sometimes we speak or complain about problems that others would love to have. I don’t think this concept applies just to white privilege. Other privileges, such as good health, wealth, beauty, power come to mind.
As stated above this is all about UChicago appealing to their right wing donors. I just looked at their enrollment statistics. They are only 5 per cent black. In the physical sciences only “.5” per cent are black and 2 per cent Hispanic!!! Native Americans represent .2 per cent overall!!!
Wow
UChicago is in a bad financial position and the letter is about trying to make themselves VERY appealing to a certain class of people.
Lets not forget the Hallmark of the Chicago School of economics is trickle down economics
Meanings of words and how they are perceived evolve and change over time as society changes, changes in usage/tone in which it’s used, and/or due to historical events:
For instance, while the epithet “damn” doesn’t have nearly as much of a sting nowadays, it was regarded as such a serious strong curse word just 70-80 years ago that when Clark Gable openly uttered it on screen in GWTW, it scandalized the audience of the late '30s.
The word “negro” was actually considered polite up until the mid-late 20th century when it no longer regarded as polite or even acceptable in polite company.
One of the funniest responses to the Dean’s letter on Twitter was some wag who quipped “No safe spaces? I guess that means they are shutting down the Econ dept.”
Well, I thought it was funny, but I like reading about Economics, so there you go.
One huge privilege we take for granted here on CC is the availability of higher education for our kids. This is not a black/white/whatever race issue. It’s an intelligence issue (and sometimes also a wealth issue). The higher the grades and scores, the more options the kid has.
Your average 100 IQ kid with a 15-16 ACT score and a 2.7 gpa will have incredibly few college options, and almost none if the parents have no money.
The fact that we are even debating the policies of U Chicago is a privilege we enjoy as educated people who are interested in how the decisions being made in higher education affect society. That kid from the “wrong side” of your town, with one parent, a job, no grades and no money, could be telling all of us to check our privilege. What are we doing for kids like this? What is U Chicago doing for kids like this?
Re #745. Trickle down economics is not the hall mark of Chicago economics. At the U of C, economists believe in laissez-faire approaches to the economy. In contrast, believers in trickle-down economics have very specific government interventions in mind involving government subsidies to the corporate sector and to the wealthy.
I think you are on to something- the former U Chicago student gov president writes on twitter that by many accounts the last Provost was pushed out to make room for this one Diermeier- whose specialty is corporate governance, crisis and reputation management, and helping companies overcome “activists”…
The new Provost’s skills on his linked in are listed as-
Crisis Management Reputation Management Regulatory Analysis Activism NGOs GameTheory Political Institutions Legislative Issues Behavioral Modeling Economics Political Science Research Qualitative Research Stata Regulations
w papers on
Reputation Rules: Strategies for building your companies most valuable Asset
A Behavioral Theory of Elections
Moral Signals, Public Outrage, and Immaterial Harms
Strategic Activism and Non-market Strategy
Your post and collegedad13’s clarifies why one HS friend who is a UChicago grad alum was so upset about the hypocrisy of UChicago’s admins considering they’ve had no problems arresting and tossing out student protesters for exercising their free speech rights historically.
To say he was incensed at the hypocrisy would be a serious understatement considering his subsequent replies to comments asking about it.
Hispanic and black totals at Harvard and Yale are almost twice as high. If you compare post 756 which is admitted students and my post 759 which is actual students I think a lot of admitted minorities are going elsewhere. Interesting.
I wonder why??
Your link shows that the 0.5% in the physical sciences represents grad school, not undergrad. The low enrollment in the physical sciences is balanced by the roughly 10% of black students in medicine. Again, these are choices students make.
For the sake of argument, I will take these numbers as is. However, my response is not “Wow.” it sis “So what?”
Why my response? When in grad school, a donor wanted to do minority outreach (I was in the sciences) because he also saw numbers like the above and assumed all sort of negative things. So, he donated money for 10+ scholarships were offered to black students for summer research projects (on real projects with top professors) complete with pay, housing, and food taken care of. And there were a coupe scholarships to pay expenses for science professional schools - all expenses paid. several grad students were to speak etc. It was heavily advertised throughout campus and sent to students directly as well as a mailer in their mailboxes (email did not exist yet).
Result - no black students showed up - and this was a very top grad program in the country, so there were students there who would easily qualify. Yet, nothing but crickets. So much for that outreach.
Anyway, I learned something there rather quickly, and have seen similar issues at my company over three decades with all sorts of outreach - if people are not interested (for cultural, religious or whatever reasons), then they cannot be even paid handsomely to do it.
Anecdotally, I asked a few of my black interns in one division why they (black interns from local high school) often did not continue - the answer, "Their friends now viewed them as geeky and acting smart and it did not look good them coming to our company and having to dress the way they had to for the internship.
My takeaway was there are much larger self-imposed roadblocks today than the simple cry of racism. Many stop themselves because friends and family have much larger say in their chosen activities. The few blacks in the sciences are from the families who have no problem bucking the neighborhood trend, which I gathered must be very hard to do - unless one is going to be baller or rap star, as those are hailed as cool.
It is interesting comparing @collegedad13’s data with @pickpocket 's data. The former is for the entire university, and the latter is for the Class of 2019. The demographics are considerably different, and assuming both are accurate, it will be interesting to know if this is a one time blip or an actual shift.
What is so bad about the demographics above? How many blacks and Native Americans apply to Chicago and other top schools? What is their accept or reject rate compared to other races? Straight percentages in a class don’t tell the whole story.
Based on what I saw at the 30 colleges we visited in the last 1.5 years, minorities were being courted with special diversity weekends, free airline flights to visit the campuses, and tuition discounts. If tons of qualified minority kids were applying, I don’t think the schools would be trying so hard and spending so much money to reach out to them.
I don’t think you can blame the colleges for the demographics of their applicants.
