Checking My Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilege

[AthenaAwakened]

I met a cloakroom girl who gave me a receipt for my ego. She was ace. She said it was too big to go in the cubbyholes, so she's have to put in the back room.

But one can be made aware of the fact that some ego-indulging behavior gets in the way of whatever is going on.

Same with privilege. You can't be expected to go in disguise. But perhaps someone might have told Marie Antoinette that her 'let them eat cake' remark betrayed a lot of privilege in her life and wasn't helping the discussion of the conditions of the poor.

Sure, some people are idiots.

However, Mary Antoinette was making a pun that didn't translate well. As I understand it, what she said when told the poor didn't have enough Bread (pain), she said they should eat a different kind of bread (brioche - a cake-like bread). She was basically saying the same sort of 'if the poor don't like their lot in life they should get their act together and try something different' right wing talking point that you see rather a lot on these forums.

If she had carefully acknowledged her own privilege before declaring that the poor shouldn't be relying on handouts, would that make her any less wrong?

had she carefully considered what she was saying, odds are she wouldn't have said it, and that's the point.

BTW, the poor did get their shit together, they took her advice and organized and that's why the Queen lost her head.

 

[Togo]

you think that appearance isn't a problem in the UK?

Having lived in both countries, I don't think it's the most powerful influence in the UK, nor is it the same problem in the same way as in the US.

uh huh

Has the BNP or have they not elected at least one member of parliament? Is there such a thing as "Paki-bashing?"

Yes to both.

and one more question, how many people of color in your circle of acquaintances have you discussed this with?.

About 8 or 9.

You need not respond here. Just think about these questions when you are going about your day.

I think I do. You're taking a hostile tone, and it's not clear to me why.

 

[EricK]

Has the BNP or have they not elected at least one member of parliament? Is there such a thing as "Paki-bashing?"

Yes to both.

I don't believe the BNP have ever had anyone elected to parliament. They had someone elected to the European parliament, but I assume that was only to get Nick Griffin out of the country as much possible.

And while 'Paki-bashing' was quite the thing when I was growing up (30-40 years ago), I don't think it really goes on anymore to any extent (obviously there might be occasional individual instances, but I don't think they are at all representative of any sections of society). But I am willing to be corrected on this if anybody can point to some recent news stories.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

you think that appearance isn't a problem in the UK?

Having lived in both countries, I don't think it's the most powerful influence in the UK, nor is it the same problem in the same way as in the US.

uh huh

Has the BNP or have they not elected at least one member of parliament? Is there such a thing as "Paki-bashing?"

Yes to both.

and one more question, how many people of color in your circle of acquaintances have you discussed this with?.

About 8 or 9.

You need not respond here. Just think about these questions when you are going about your day.

I think I do. You're taking a hostile tone, and it's not clear to me why.

actually, I'm not taking a hostile tone. What hostile thing have I typed? You may be getting uncomfortable, but that's not because I'm being hostile.

If we were in the same room right now you would see a smile on my lips, a gleam in my eye and hear a lilt in my voice.

 

[Togo]

You need not respond here. Just think about these questions when you are going about your day.

I think I do. You're taking a hostile tone, and it's not clear to me why.

actually, I'm not taking a hostile tone. What hostile thing have I typed?

Maybe it's just me. You're asking me to recite a list of events in the UK, questioning whether I've shared my perceptions with people of other ethnicities. You're asking me to make statements that presumably have some kind of resonance for you.

But it's hard to escape the idea that they really only resonate for you because of my skin colour. And yeah, having a conversation directed at my skin colour, while ignoring the content of my posts, makes me uncomfortable.

If we were in the same room right now you would see a smile on my lips, a gleam in my eye and hear a lilt in my voice.

And you'd see my flat incomprehension at why you'd think ignoring what I've said was funny.

 

[Togo]

Sure, some people are idiots.

However, Mary Antoinette was making a pun that didn't translate well. As I understand it, what she said when told the poor didn't have enough Bread (pain), she said they should eat a different kind of bread (brioche - a cake-like bread). She was basically saying the same sort of 'if the poor don't like their lot in life they should get their act together and try something different' right wing talking point that you see rather a lot on these forums.

If she had carefully acknowledged her own privilege before declaring that the poor shouldn't be relying on handouts, would that make her any less wrong?

had she carefully considered what she was saying, odds are she wouldn't have said it, and that's the point.

Nah, that's not the point I'm making. I'm drawing a parallel between commentary on the poor now, and commentary on the poor then, and suggesting that they are more similar than typically acknowledged. There's no shortage of rich people berating the poor for their lack of industry in any era, including our own. It's easy to assume she was just being thoughtless, but she was an active political figure - I reckon she would have thought about, and that it's more likely that it formed part of her core political beliefs.

BTW, the poor did get their shit together, they took her advice and organized and that's why the Queen lost her head.

Quite so.

 

[Bronzeage]

As a member of a privileged class, I understand very well what "check your privilege" means. It's a simple warning against hubris. Hubris is a funny thing. It's a disease, of which the prime symptom is the inability to recognize the symptoms.

It's easy for us privileged guys( I say guys, because while being white is good, being a white male is the gold standard of privilege), especially young privileged guys to think their ability to execute a perfect swan dive is because of all the work and practice they put into it. It never occurs to them, they were born on the high diving board and never actually climbed the ladder.

Just as no one ever asked to be born privileged, it's not really fair to expect someone to apologise for their privilege, anymore than we should expect a seven foot tall basketball player to say, "Sorry," after slam dunking the ball over the heads of shorter players.

The thing which seems to upset our little Princeton princeling, is the part about, "...check your privilege and realize that nothing you have accomplished is real." Here's the reality. He is a college student. He has spent his short privileged life preparing to accomplish something, but hasn't actually done anything yet. In the diving competition, he's still looking over the edge of the board. It's only his lack of perspective that makes standing on the board seem like a difficult feat.

He may figure it out in time. I hope so, because the only thing worse than not recognizing one's privilege is wasting it.

 

[doubtingt]

I am betting this guy is dead on in accurately describing how "check your privilege" is actually used by 99% of the people who say it. It is just the kind of empty headed platitude that people with zero rational argument would resort to in order to blindly dismiss arguments they are intellectually incapable of responding to.

If there is an actual fact the person is overlooking, then you simply point to that fact and explain how it is relevant. When you are incapable of pointing to any actual facts or flaws with a person's argument, then you use their skin color or gender to assume that they must be overlooking important facts due to "privilege", even though you yourself don't know what these "facts" actually are.

Not to mention, he is at Princeton. Most of the minority and female students there also come from relative privilege in the dimension that determines privilege far more than race and gender, wealth.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

There is a phrase that floats around college campuses, Princeton being no exception, that threatens to strike down opinions without regard for their merits, but rather solely on the basis of the person that voiced them. “Check your privilege,” the saying goes, and I have been reprimanded by it several times this year.

Without a description of the incidents he is talking about, I am not prepared to leap to the conclusion, as some of you seem to be willing to, that he is a bigot unaware of his privilege. If his opinions really are being struck down simply due to him having voiced them, because of his race or gender, that really is a problem. That sort of thing does happen. We may just have seen Athena do it to Togo right in this very thread. We see the same in threads on abortion where some people will say men shouldn't speak any opinion because they can't get pregnant, or that men shouldn't have anything to say about rape, because its usually women who are the victims.

“Check your privilege,” they tell me in a command that teeters between an imposition to actually explore how I got where I am, and a reminder that I ought to feel personally apologetic because white males seem to pull most of the strings in the world.

As you are saying, he really should realize the privileged background he comes from. He's also right that he should not feel personally apologetic for happening to be born a white male.

I do not accuse those who “check” me and my perspective of overt racism, although the phrase, which assumes that simply because I belong to a certain ethnic group I should be judged collectively with it, toes that line.

He's right about that.

But I do condemn them for diminishing everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life, and for ascribing all the fruit I reap not to the seeds I sow but to some invisible patron saint of white maleness who places it out for me before I even arrive.

If that is actually happening to him, and we can't know if it is or not without more information, he would again be right to condemn them. Being born a white male will probably make life easier (sometimes much easier, depending on where in the world you live and under what circumstances), but it isn't an instant guaranteed win.

Furthermore, I condemn them for casting the equal protection clause, indeed the very idea of a meritocracy, as a myth, and for declaring that we are all governed by invisible forces (some would call them “stigmas” or “societal norms”), that our nation runs on racist and sexist conspiracies. Forget “you didn’t build that;” check your privilege and realize that nothing you have accomplished is real.

Such invisible forces do exist. Such invisible forces are unfair. Such invisible voices sometimes go unseen and unchecked, hurting blacks, gays, and females. Liberals are right to complain about that. Such invisible forces sometimes get exagerated and exploited, hurting whites, asians, and men. That isn't good either.

 

[ksen]

But I do condemn them for diminishing everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life, and for ascribing all the fruit I reap not to the seeds I sow but to some invisible patron saint of white maleness who places it out for me before I even arrive.

If that is actually happening to him, and we can't know if it is or not without more information, he would again be right to condemn them. Being born a white male will probably make life easier (sometimes much easier, depending on where in the world you live and under what circumstances), but it isn't an instant guaranteed win.

Furthermore, I condemn them for casting the equal protection clause, indeed the very idea of a meritocracy, as a myth, and for declaring that we are all governed by invisible forces (some would call them “stigmas” or “societal norms”), that our nation runs on racist and sexist conspiracies. Forget “you didn’t build that;” check your privilege and realize that nothing you have accomplished is real.

Such invisible forces do exist. Such invisible forces are unfair. Such invisible voices sometimes go unseen and unchecked, hurting blacks, gays, and females. Liberals are right to complain about that. Such invisible forces sometimes get exagerated and exploited, hurting whites, asians, and men. That isn't good either.

It's when you ignore your privilege and project an attitude of "If I did it then anybody can do it and if you don't then you're just lazy and not trying hard enough" that privilege becomes a problem.

I'm sorry but the vast majority of the time no amount of bootstrapping can overcome the obstacles you are born into. This kid was born into privilege. He didn't "do it himself" as he claims. The hard work of at least two generations went into giving him a lot of advantages. That's not bad in and of itself because I think we'd all want to give our kids as many advantages as we could. But don't turn around and use your success as a cudgel to beat down others for not being successful.

I'd also like to know if this kid was a legacy admission into Princeton.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

It's when you ignore your privilege and project an attitude of "If I did it then anybody can do it and if you don't then you're just lazy and not trying hard enough" that privilege becomes a problem.

I agree with that. Is there more to this story than what is in the OP though? Because I don't see him saying the above.

 

[ksen]

It's when you ignore your privilege and project an attitude of "If I did it then anybody can do it and if you don't then you're just lazy and not trying hard enough" that privilege becomes a problem.

I agree with that. Is there more to this story than what is in the OP though? Because I don't see him saying the above.

I think there is more to it and can be inferred from this passage of the essay:

But they can’t be telling me that everything I’ve done with my life can be credited to the racist patriarchy holding my hand throughout my years of education and eventually guiding me into Princeton. Even that is too extreme. So to find out what they are saying, I decided to take their advice. I actually went and checked the origins of my privileged existence, to empathize with those whose underdog stories I can’t possibly comprehend.

Just another observation:

Fortgang goes on to talk about all things his grandparents and parents did and follows those bullet points up with:

That’s the problem with calling someone out for the “privilege” which you assume has defined their narrative. You don’t know what their struggles have been, what they may have gone through to be where they are.

He smoothly takes the struggles his grandparents and parents went through as struggles he himself conquered.

I'm sorry but the essay reads like it was written by a giant douchebag and it probably more properly belongs on Thought Catalog than in an ivy-league school newspaper.

 

[Trausti]

On reading (or skimming over) the piece, it appears his first issue is that "check your privilege" is code for "shut up your views don't count." I don't think anyone has any greater moral standing to tell another to "check your privilege" than anyone else. It's odd that somehow he is a "giant douchebag" for noticing the idiocy of the "check your privilege" crowd at Princeton, when anyone lucky enough to go to an Ivy League school like Princeton would be considered . . . um . . . privileged. This idea that he, because of his gender or race, must somehow bow out from discussion because of who he is or where he came from kind of wreaks of religion - Catholic / Jewish guilt? The contemporary variant of the Jewish deicide for inherited past wrongs?

 

[Sarpedon]

I would think its a sign of good scholarship that the faculty at Princeton are aware of the privilege of themselves and their students, and urge them to take it into account in their studies.

 

[ksen]

On reading (or skimming over) the piece, it appears his first issue is that "check your privilege" is code for "shut up your views don't count."

Like I said in the OP if that's his take then he has no idea what "check your privilege" actually means.

I don't think anyone has any greater moral standing to tell another to "check your privilege" than anyone else. It's odd that somehow he is a "giant douchebag" for noticing the idiocy of the "check your privilege" crowd at Princeton,

Except that it's not idiocy and he does come across in his essay like a giant, whiny douchebag.

when anyone lucky enough to go to an Ivy League school like Princeton would be considered . . . um . . . privileged.

No, that's not the case. Kids with underprivileged backgrounds also make into Princeton and schools like it. It's just easier for kids born into privilege to make it into Princeton and schools like it.

This idea that he, because of his gender or race, must somehow bow out from discussion because of who he is or where he came from kind of wreaks of religion - Catholic / Jewish guilt? The contemporary variant of the Jewish deicide for inherited past wrongs?

Wat?

Nobody is saying he should bow out of conversations.

 

[Bronzeage]

I would think its a sign of good scholarship that the faculty at Princeton are aware of the privilege of themselves and their students, and urge them to take it into account in their studies.

If someone told me to "Check my privilege," I would pat my pockets and say, "Yep, all here."

 

[AthenaAwakened]

It's when you ignore your privilege and project an attitude of "If I did it then anybody can do it and if you don't then you're just lazy and not trying hard enough" that privilege becomes a problem.

I agree with that. Is there more to this story than what is in the OP though? Because I don't see him saying the above.

I think there is more to it and can be inferred from this passage of the essay:

But they can’t be telling me that everything I’ve done with my life can be credited to the racist patriarchy holding my hand throughout my years of education and eventually guiding me into Princeton. Even that is too extreme. So to find out what they are saying, I decided to take their advice. I actually went and checked the origins of my privileged existence, to empathize with those whose underdog stories I can’t possibly comprehend.

Just another observation:

Fortgang goes on to talk about all things his grandparents and parents did and follows those bullet points up with:

That’s the problem with calling someone out for the “privilege” which you assume has defined their narrative. You don’t know what their struggles have been, what they may have gone through to be where they are.

He smoothly takes the struggles his grandparents and parents went through as struggles he himself conquered.

I'm sorry but the essay reads like it was written by a giant douchebag and it probably more properly belongs on Thought Catalog than in an ivy-league school newspaper.

I noticed that too.

After reading the article, I knew much more about his grandparents than I did about him.

 

[Mumbles]

I am betting this guy is dead on in accurately describing how "check your privilege" is actually used by 99% of the people who say it. It is just the kind of empty headed platitude that people with zero rational argument would resort to in order to blindly dismiss arguments they are intellectually incapable of responding to.

No, he clearly showed that he both has little understanding of others' lives, and that he doesn't understand that the people who say it aren't asking for him to apologize for his position in life, or saying that he didn't work hard, or anything like that. But if he becomes president of the US, nobody will be saying that he didn't write a book that he obviously did, or demanding to see his birth certificate and insisting he was born in Israel, or calling any of his programs "payback for the Holocaust", to use...a few of very many recent, high-profile episodes. And he's perfectly clear that he's inherited not just "values", but also, say, wealth, a relatively low-violence community, in one of the best countries to be born into on the planet, and a family that, due to access, knows how to help him out.

I'm a black guy, but I've never been *poor*. And I don't mean like my friend who says "I'm poor" when he really just has a mortgage, I mean real, have to skip meals, public housing if not homeless, under-the-table work only, no ID, clamoring for any real job, relies on check cashing places, kid's school offers no advanced classes, Paul Ryan thinks they're lazy poor. And those people, for the most part, bust their asses, probably far more than this kid ever did, and *certainly* more than I ever have.

If there is an actual fact the person is overlooking, then you simply point to that fact and explain how it is relevant. When you are incapable of pointing to any actual facts or flaws with a person's argument, then you use their skin color or gender to assume that they must be overlooking important facts due to "privilege", even though you yourself don't know what these "facts" actually are.

Not to mention, he is at Princeton. Most of the minority and female students there also come from relative privilege in the dimension that determines privilege far more than race and gender, wealth.

Um, Princeton allows people on scholarships or with loans to attend, you know. Not to mention, he doesn't specify *who* is saying this to him in the first place, in addition to leaving out the *why*. But in any case, around the hundredth time some wealthy white person wanted to tell me how easy I had because of Affirmative Action, not knowing that I grew up around incredible violence, was treated like dirt by many of my teachers for no apparent reason, and *still* managed an SAT score several hundred points higher than them and blew them out of the water in terms of college grades, I stopped bothering with them. I don't think it would be good for, say, Tim Wise to dismiss someone with the term, because he bills himself as an educator. But in this guy's case, he's probably getting it from other kids that are their to *learn*, and are rather tired of hearing people like him.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I think there is more to it and can be inferred from this passage of the essay:

Oh. Well there you go then lol. I had only read the part quoted in the OP and didn't realize there was more.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

I am betting this guy is dead on in accurately describing how "check your privilege" is actually used by 99% of the people who say it. It is just the kind of empty headed platitude that people with zero rational argument would resort to in order to blindly dismiss arguments they are intellectually incapable of responding to.

If there is an actual fact the person is overlooking, then you simply point to that fact and explain how it is relevant. When you are incapable of pointing to any actual facts or flaws with a person's argument, then you use their skin color or gender to assume that they must be overlooking important facts due to "privilege", even though you yourself don't know what these "facts" actually are.

Not to mention, he is at Princeton. Most of the minority and female students there also come from relative privilege in the dimension that determines privilege far more than race and gender, wealth.

do you have any proof that 99% of the people who have said check your privilege to this young man mean exactly what this this says they do?

No, you don't.

What we do have is a freshman college student writing about character and how he has it but then spends a great deal of time in his essay talking about the character building liives of his grandparents and not himself. He didn't have to deal with Nazis, immigration, or even a hang nail. He basically gives an account of his fortunate and dare I say blessed upbringing and then says not to call him fortunate and blessed.