Austrian Privilege Checklist

A few nights ago, I went out to dinner with some of the other Fulbright combined grantees (after our waltzing lessons -- yes, I'm going to a real Wiener ball at the end of the month!). We got to talking about lesson plans, and one of the other TAs mentioned that she's led some pretty successful lessons using Peggy McIntosh's white privilege checklist. Her kids, though, mostly well-to-do Austrians without migration backgrounds*, weren't really getting how this all relates to Austria. "But there aren't that many black people in Austria," they said. "It's not the same."

No, it's not the same. Which is why, taking my cue from McIntosh's original article, a list of religious privileges I found on the Internet, and the experiences of myself and my students, I've generated this checklist of Austrian privileges:

Fasching

"I'm Gonna Fail!"

"Harvard has failed us," goes the speech by Scott Levin-Gesundheit, my former PAF, at Harvard gradation. "And by that, I mean it's given us B-pluses."

I have, throughout my school career, heard from countless friends and schoolmates that "I'm so gonna fail," "I totally failed that exam," etc. And somehow, it all came out okay. No one actually failed out of high school, or of Harvard, or even failed a single class. "Failure" in the American school system is a subjective -- doing more poorly than you had hoped or expected -- rather than an objective experience. Not so in Österreich.

A Purpose, It's That Little Flame

On Friday, I was leading a discussion with a small group of sixth formers (16-year-olds) about social problems, and making a difference in the world. Suddenly, one of the students, who had been super-engaged and participatory throughout the discussion, turned to me and said, "I feel like it sounds so awful when I talk. Like beschissenes German English." It was a problem that I know well.