A great kerfuffle, ballyhoo, and brouhaha recently erupted after a phenotypically white male attending Princeton University wrote an essay objecting to the fact that several others on campus were constantly instructing him to check his privilege.
Either he is obviously evil, or no one properly instructed him on how to check his privilege. I’m here to help.
For white males, checking your privilege has nothing to do with confronting uncomfortable facts. It’s not what you have to confront—it’s about what you’re being forced to ignore. Checking one’s privilege is almost exclusively a process of evading the most plausible reasons for why white males began dominating the world until others were able to start guilt-tripping them and telling them to check their privilege. It involves living in complete denial. Instead of realistically confronting unearned privilege, it involves swallowing unearned guilt.
POLL: Is Global Warming junk science with a political agenda or is it real?
Pretend it makes sense that it’s currently considered the pinnacle of virtue to eagerly hand over what you have instead of fighting to keep it. Pretend that all other groups aren’t actually fighting loudly and brazenly and openly in their own self-interest. Pretend that it’s only wrong when white males do it.
Pretend it’s moral—rather than cowardly and spineless—to bend over, grab your ankles, and placidly acquiesce to social shaming and belligerent guilt-tripping.
Pretend that people who whine about white privilege are typically white and far more privileged than most whites. Pretend that they are motivated by a sense of fairness rather than a deep-rooted guilt that they’re projecting onto less privileged whites. Pretend that if their families have been in America since colonial times, they aren’t more likely to have descended from slave owners rather than from white indentured servants. Pretend that the peddlers of the “white privilege” meme are motivated by facts and logic rather than emotion and superstition.
Pretend that only Western civilization—rather than every civilization that has ever existed until, ironically, latter-day Western civilization—is chauvinistic, considers itself the center of the universe, and acts the best it can to advance its own interests whether or not it’s at others’ expense. Forget all about Hannibal, the Moors, Genghis Khan, and Islamic conquerors. Deny or suppress any evidence that suggests white males merely won a game in which everyone was a willing participant. Go one step further and accuse whatever team wins the World Series this year of cheating.
Read more at:
http://takimag.com/article/how_to_check_your_privilege_every_3000_miles/print#ixzz31vtHMTX8
Comments