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Post by Admin on May 6, 2014 11:13:57 GMT
April 2, 2014
Checking My Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilege
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. The phrase, handed down by my moral superiors, descends recklessly, like an Obama-sanctioned drone, and aims laser-like at my pinkish-peach complexion, my maleness, and the nerve I displayed in offering an opinion rooted in a personal Weltanschauung. “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.
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. 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. 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.
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. I have unearthed some examples of the privilege with which my family was blessed, and now I think I better understand those who assure me that skin color allowed my family and I to flourish today.
Perhaps it’s the privilege my grandfather and his brother had to flee their home as teenagers when the Nazis invaded Poland, leaving their mother and five younger siblings behind, running and running until they reached a Displaced Persons camp in Siberia, where they would do years of hard labor in the bitter cold until World War II ended. Maybe it was the privilege my grandfather had of taking on the local Rabbi’s work in that DP camp, telling him that the spiritual leader shouldn’t do hard work, but should save his energy to pass Jewish tradition along to those who might survive. Perhaps it was the privilege my great-grandmother and those five great-aunts and uncles I never knew had of being shot into an open grave outside their hometown. Maybe that’s my privilege.
Or maybe it’s the privilege my grandmother had of spending weeks upon weeks on a death march through Polish forests in subzero temperatures, one of just a handful to survive, only to be put in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she would have died but for the Allied forces who liberated her and helped her regain her health when her weight dwindled to barely 80 pounds.
Perhaps my privilege is that those two resilient individuals came to America with no money and no English, obtained citizenship, learned the language and met each other; that my grandfather started a humble wicker basket business with nothing but long hours, an idea, and an iron will—to paraphrase the man I never met: “I escaped Hitler. Some business troubles are going to ruin me?” Maybe my privilege is that they worked hard enough to raise four children, and to send them to Jewish day school and eventually City College.
Perhaps it was my privilege that my own father worked hard enough in City College to earn a spot at a top graduate school, got a good job, and for 25 years got up well before the crack of dawn, sacrificing precious time he wanted to spend with those he valued most—his wife and kids—to earn that living. I can say with certainty there was no legacy involved in any of his accomplishments. The wicker business just isn’t that influential.Now would you say that we’ve been really privileged? That our success has been gift-wrapped?
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. Assuming they’ve benefitted from “power systems” or other conspiratorial imaginary institutions denies them credit for all they’ve done, things of which you may not even conceive. You don’t know whose father died defending your freedom. You don’t know whose mother escaped oppression. You don’t know who conquered their demons, or may still conquering them now.
The truth is, though, that I have been exceptionally privileged in my life, albeit not in the way any detractors would have it. It has been my distinct privilege that my grandparents came to America. First, that there was a place at all that would take them from the ruins of Europe. And second, that such a place was one where they could legally enter, learn the language, and acclimate to a society that ultimately allowed them to flourish.
It was their privilege to come to a country that grants equal protection under the law to its citizens, that cares not about religion or race, but the content of your character.
It was my privilege that my grandfather was blessed with resolve and an entrepreneurial spirit, and that he was lucky enough to come to the place where he could realize the dream of giving his children a better life than he had.
But far more important for me than his attributes was the legacy he sought to pass along, which forms the basis of what detractors call my “privilege,” but which actually should be praised as one of altruism and self-sacrifice. Those who came before us suffered for the sake of giving us a better life. When we similarly sacrifice for our descendents by caring for the planet, it’s called “environmentalism,” and is applauded. But when we do it by passing along property and a set of values, it’s called “privilege.” (And when we do it by raising questions about our crippling national debt, we’re called Tea Party radicals.) Such sacrifice of any form shouldn’t be scorned, but admired.
My exploration did yield some results. I recognize that it was my parents’ privilege and now my own that there is such a thing as an American dream which is attainable even for a penniless Jewish immigrant.
I am privileged that values like faith and education were passed along to me. My grandparents played an active role in my parents’ education, and some of my earliest memories included learning the Hebrew alphabet with my Dad. It’s been made clear to me that education begins in the home, and the importance of parents’ involvement with their kids’ education—from mathematics to morality—cannot be overstated. It’s not a matter of white or black, male or female or any other division which we seek, but a matter of the values we pass along, the legacy we leave, that perpetuates “privilege.” And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Behind every success, large or small, there is a story, and it isn’t always told by sex or skin color. My appearance certainly doesn’t tell the whole story, and to assume that it does and that I should apologize for it is insulting. While I haven’t done everything for myself up to this point in my life, someone sacrificed themselves so that I can lead a better life. But that is a legacy I am proud of.
I have checked my privilege. And I apologize for nothing.
Tal Fortgang is a freshman from New Rochelle, NY.
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Post by Admin on May 6, 2014 11:15:34 GMT
Going Viral: Princeton University Student’s Bold Response After Allegedly Being Told Repeatedly to ‘Check Your Privilege’
Apr. 30, 2014
Tal Fortgang, a freshman at Princeton University, says he has been ordered to “check your privilege” by his “moral superiors” several times this year because he happens to be a white male. In a column in the Princeton Tory, Fortgang takes on the ideology he says ”assumes that simply because I belong to a certain ethnic group I should be judged collectively with it.”
“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,” the student writes. “The phrase, handed down by my moral superiors, descends recklessly, like an Obama-sanctioned drone, and aims laser-like at my pinkish-peach complexion, my maleness, and the nerve I displayed in offering an opinion rooted in a personal Weltanschauung.”
“‘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,” he continues.
Fortgang then explores his family’s history to figure out where his “privilege” comes from:
Perhaps it’s the privilege my grandfather and his brother had to flee their home as teenagers when the Nazis invaded Poland, leaving their mother and five younger siblings behind, running and running until they reached a Displaced Persons camp in Siberia, where they would do years of hard labor in the bitter cold until World War II ended. Maybe it was the privilege my grandfather had of taking on the local Rabbi’s work in that DP camp, telling him that the spiritual leader shouldn’t do hard work, but should save his energy to pass Jewish tradition along to those who might survive. Perhaps it was the privilege my great-grandmother and those five great-aunts and uncles I never knew had of being shot into an open grave outside their hometown. Maybe that’s my privilege.
Or maybe it’s the privilege my grandmother had of spending weeks upon weeks on a death march through Polish forests in subzero temperatures, one of just a handful to survive, only to be put in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she would have died but for the Allied forces who liberated her and helped her regain her health when her weight dwindled to barely 80 pounds.
Perhaps my privilege is that those two resilient individuals came to America with no money and no English, obtained citizenship, learned the language and met each other; that my grandfather started a humble wicker basket business with nothing but long hours, an idea, and an iron will—to paraphrase the man I never met: “I escaped Hitler. Some business troubles are going to ruin me?” Maybe my privilege is that they worked hard enough to raise four children, and to send them to Jewish day school and eventually City College.
Perhaps it was my privilege that my own father worked hard enough in City College to earn a spot at a top graduate school, got a good job, and for 25 years got up well before the crack of dawn, sacrificing precious time he wanted to spend with those he valued most—his wife and kids—to earn that living. I can say with certainty there was no legacy involved in any of his accomplishments. The wicker business just isn’t that influential.Now would you say that we’ve been really privileged? That our success has been gift-wrapped?
The real problem with the notion of automatic “privilege,” he explains, is you have no idea what their struggles have really been or “what they may have gone through to be where they are.”
“Behind every success, large or small, there is a story, and it isn’t always told by sex or skin color. My appearance certainly doesn’t tell the whole story, and to assume that it does and that I should apologize for it is insulting,” Fortgang writes. “While I haven’t done everything for myself up to this point in my life, someone sacrificed themselves so that I can lead a better life. But that is a legacy I am proud of.”
“I have checked my privilege. And I apologize for nothing,” he concludes.
Fortgang is from New Rochelle, N.Y., and plans to major in either history or politics.
His column has received both praise and criticism. One commenter told Fortgang that as a “white male, you are most likely ignorant of the ingrained racism or sexism that lives in society today.”
“You want to play oppression olympics? What about the millions of blacks enslaved in America for 300 years, who then had to deal with segregation and Jim Crow while new immigrants were allowed to assimilate into white culture within one or 2 generations,” another wrote.
One commenter on the College Fix website replied, “From a black guy (although my pic doesn’t show it), good for him. And nicely said.”
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Post by Admin on May 6, 2014 11:26:27 GMT
“I’ll never apologize for my white privilege” guy is basically most of white America
SUNDAY, MAY 4, 2014
A college student who doesn’t believe in the existence of structural racism or white supremacy wrote an essay about why he would “never apologize” for his white privilege, and Time magazine thought it would be a really cool idea to publish it. Probably because Princeton University freshman Tal Fortgang speaks for many white Americans when he says that racism and white privilege aren’t real.
Tired of being told to “check his privilege” by others at his college, Fortgang goes through his family’s history and concludes that he deserves to go to an Ivy League school and live in a wealthy suburb of New York City and share his ridiculous baby tantrum thoughts on a national news site because his family made smarter and better choices than other families.
“I am privileged that values like faith and education were passed along to me. My grandparents played an active role in my parents’ education, and some of my earliest memories included learning the Hebrew alphabet with my Dad,” Fortgang writes. “It’s been made clear to me that education begins in the home, and the importance of parents’ involvement with their kids’ education — from mathematics to morality — cannot be overstated. It’s not a matter of white or black, male or female or any other division which we seek, but a matter of the values we pass along, the legacy we leave, that perpetuates ‘privilege.’ And there’s nothing wrong with that.”
It goes on like this for a long time. Nothing in the essay is a new or shocking expression of white privilege or the astounding sense of entitlement and self-regard shared by white racists. (Yes, Fortgang’s ignorance is a manifestation of his racism. So is his glee over the deaths of Palestinians.)
A lot of people in the United States also believe that race-blind meritocracy is real and that discussions of privilege and institutional racism are just sore losers being sore, and many of the people who think this way also happen to make our policies or control most of the wealth in this country. (Or both.) Fortgang extolling the bootstrap ingenuity of his parents and attributing his spot at Princeton to little more than his family’s focus on education is the same kind of ignorance that fuels Paul Ryan’s belief that parents who use government programs to help feed their families don’t love their children or Rand Paul’s faith that his niece’s spot in a veterinary program means that sexism is dead. The only difference is that Fortgang is just some college jerk-off, but Ryan and Paul get to shape policies that force real people to go hungry or prevent women from seeking legal recourse when they’re discriminated against by their employers.
It’s likely that Fortgang will have the opportunity at Princeton to learn about the racial wealth gap, the legacy of red-lining, the unemployment rate among college educated men of color versus their white counterparts, the convergence of racism and sexism that leaves women of color disproportionately impacted by domestic violence, the gender pay gap experienced by black women, the deadly violence faced by black children and the myriad other manifestations of racism in the United States. Basically all of the things that he will never have to experience as an extraordinarily privileged white man. And it’s possible that a deeper engagement with these issues will do him some good, and maybe make him a little less of an ignorant shithead.
But far more likely is the fact that Fortgang will continue to believe that being asked to check his privilege (which really just means recognizing, identifying and challenging the insidious operations of racism) is just whining from jealous haters. Because – like many white people – he doesn’t want to confront racism and white privilege because those things have — and will continue to — really, really help him out in life. And the reality is that he doesn’t have to confront this stuff, either. Not in his daily life, not while trying to find a job and not in any of the other ridiculous essays that he writes for his college newspaper. That’s exactly how white privilege works.
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Post by Admin on May 6, 2014 11:27:33 GMT
We don’t need your apology, Princeton kid Tal Fortgang wrote an essay saying he's not sorry for being male and white -- but who asked him to be?
MONDAY, MAY 5, 2014
Tal Fortgang would like you to know he’s not sorry. Sounds fine to me, because I don’t remember anyone saying they wanted a mea culpa anyway.
In an April essay for the Princeton Tory that was republished last week in Time, the Ivy League freshman proved yet again why his university leads the nation in trolly op-eds by declaring authoritatively, “I have checked my privilege. I apologize for nothing.” Just what the world needs — more unrepentant affluent people. Unsurprisingly, the notion of a white male from an expensive school, a young man who likely has not personally experienced much racism and sexism in his life, using his already privileged platform to announce to the world that he disputes “that our nation runs on racist and sexist conspiracies,” was met with a mix of derisive laughter, fuming rage and well-articulated rebuttals.
Fortgang, a man for whom high school graduation is still a recent memory, is already world-weary of “the phrase, handed down by my moral superiors,” that he check his privilege. In his essay, Fortgang goes on to do just that, and decides he’s totally fine with his privilege, a privilege dearly paid for by the grit of his great-grandparents and grandparents, and the hard work of his father. He further mentions, by the way, “everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life,” with no specifics. His piece has exactly the combination of naiveté and obnoxiousness you’d expect from a cocky white kid who pens essays that use the word “Weltanschauung.”
To be fair to him, though, “Check your privilege” has become the “Is there gluten in this?” of public discourse, an expression so promiscuously deployed it’s bound to incite a few eyerolls along the way. And it can be a pretty damn convenient way of shutting down conversation, suggesting that someone who hasn’t faced certain biases firsthand has no right to comment on them. We certainly saw plenty of how that line of thinking can miss the point entirely just a few weeks ago, when white male Stephen Colbert was the subject of misguided outrage when a satirical bit was taken out of context.
So let’s get clear here. Fortgang and his whole sorry-I’m-not-sorry ilk seem to think that asking people who have been given more in life to acknowledge their advantages is tantamount to demanding they give something up. That Fortgang casually tosses in an aside that by “raising questions about our crippling national debt, we’re called Tea Party radicals” suggests there might be a deeper defensiveness here. He adds that “My appearance certainly doesn’t tell the whole story, and to assume that it does and that I should apologize for it is insulting.” I don’t know if there’s a whole lot of insisting that Tal Fortgang say he’s sorry for being white and male going on out there, but I do know that plenty of us are perfectly content to have challenging conversations about social issues with people of varying backgrounds without any expectation that anybody be sorry for the color or gender or orientation they were born with. I also know few of us would suggest that successful people haven’t worked hard in life. I agree with Fortgang that before making a snap judgment about anyone it’s useful to recall that “You don’t know whose father died defending your freedom. You don’t know whose mother escaped oppression. You don’t know who conquered their demons, or may still conquering them now.”
But what people often don’t like – what Fortgang himself quite obviously doesn’t like – is when someone who hasn’t walked in your shoes tries to tell you your experience. What people don’t like is when someone who moves through the world with a particular set of advantages writes an essay that uses the word “empathize” but then confidently announces that he lives in “a country that grants equal protection under the law to its citizens, that cares not about religion or race, but the content of your character.” Young man, if you honestly think this country doesn’t care about religion or race, then you are privileged. You have grown up in an America that has enabled you to not know otherwise. And I don’t need to you to be sorry about it, because you didn’t create that. I’d just love for you to someday understand it.
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Post by Admin on May 6, 2014 12:01:13 GMT
PRINCETON STUDENT TAL FORTGANG WON'T CHECK HIS WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE, BUT HE SURE SHOULD
2 May 2014
If you’re involved in the social justice movement in any way, it’s likely that you’ve been told you “check your privilege” a time or two. Most of us have privilege in one form or another, even if we belong to an otherwise marginalized group. For example, I will face fat discrimination as a fat woman, but I won’t deal with discrimination based on my skin color because I am white.
In a column called ”Why I’ll Never Apologize for My White Male Privilege” that somehow managed to make it from The Princeton Daily to TIME Magazine, college freshman Tal Fortgang makes a bold proclamation: he realizes his white, male privilege, and he’s not apologizing for it. This, of course, is not anything new. White men have been refusing to recognize their advantages with regards to the imposition and enforcement of race and gender-related social norms since the beginning of time, so Fortgang is just continuing a long legacy of his predecessors.
Either way, he is still a college freshman with much to learn about the way privilege and oppression actually work in the world. I was 25 years old before I even heard the word intersectionality, largely due to the fact that straight, white, cisgender men get the most attention in the history and philosophy books.
I was once a college journalist, and I was equally terrible. My first column at Texas Tech’s The Daily Toreador was called “Republicans Are Ruining America.” Like Fortgang, I was ballsy, but woefully misinformed. Instead of taking down a college freshman with my unbridled feminist rage, I decided it would be best to express my feelings far more productively – with GIFs. Here are seven of Fortgang’s most misguided quotes, and my response to them.
1. “‘Check your privilege,’ the saying goes, and I have been reprimanded by it several times this year. The phrase, handed down by my moral superiors, descends recklessly, like an Obama-sanctioned drone, and aims laser-like at my pinkish-peach complexion, my maleness, and the nerve I displayed in offering an opinion rooted in a personal Weltanschauung.”
2. “’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.”
3. “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.”
4. “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.”
5. “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. Assuming they’ve benefitted from ‘power systems’ or other conspiratorial imaginary institutions denies them credit for all they’ve done, things of which you may not even conceive.”
6. “Behind every success, large or small, there is a story, and it isn’t always told by sex or skin color. My appearance certainly doesn’t tell the whole story, and to assume that it does and that I should apologize for it is insulting.”
7. I have checked my privilege. And I apologize for nothing.
The problem with Fortgang’s argument is simple: your family dealing with oppression does not mean that you have ever dealt with oppression personally. I don’t think anyone would suggest that the Jewish people have not experienced a horrifying amount of oppression and violence, but that does not mean that a white Jewish man living in the United States does not have a distinct set of advantages that can make life a lot easier.
That isn’t necessarily true for people of color and other oppressed minorities. Even though slavery no longer exists in the United States, institutional racism does. Although women are now allowed to own property, they still are still objectified and sexually assaulted at staggering rates.
For example, When Tal Fortgang graduates college, he will have a significantly higher income potential than his classmates who are not white men. Not because he worked any harder than his black and female classmates, but by the sheer virtue of being a white man. That is not something that his grandfather worked hard for after coming to the United States. That is the result of patriarchy, whether he wants to admit it or not.
In the end, whether or not Fortgang wants to check his privilege, he still has it. No one who is telling him or any other white, straight, cisgender man to do so is hoping to “make them feel bad about being a white man,” they’re doing it to ensure that he understands the context of his opinions and how they fit into a world that has used the privilege of being white and male to commit violence and oppression.
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Post by Admin on May 6, 2014 12:06:23 GMT
WHAT IS WHITE PRIVILEGE? WHY PRINCETON STUDENT TAL FORTGANG NEEDS A HISTORY LESSON
May 5 2014
Over the weekend, an essay entitled ”Checking My Privilege” has been making its rounds online. In the piece, Tal Fortgang, a current Princeton freshman, describes his frustration with being told to “check his privilege.” Here’s an excerpt from his essay:
“Check your privilege,” the saying goes, and I have been reprimanded by it several times this year. The phrase, handed down by my moral superiors, descends recklessly, like an Obama-sanctioned drone, and aims laser-like at my pinkish-peach complexion [and] my maleness…
Perhaps it’s the privilege my grandfather and his brother had to flee their home as teenagers when the Nazis invaded Poland, leaving their mother and five younger siblings behind, running and running until they reached a Displaced Persons camp in Siberia, where they would do years of hard labor in the bitter cold until World War II ended…Or maybe it’s the privilege my grandmother had of spending weeks upon weeks on a death march through Polish forests in subzero temperatures, one of just a handful to survive, only to be put in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she would have died but for the Allied forces who liberated her and helped her regain her health when her weight dwindled to barely 80 pounds.
Before I say anything, I would like to clarify that I will not engage in this “Oppression Olympics.” I am not discounting the Holocaust. I am not putting slavery on a pedestal. This isn’t a contest of whose oppression is worse than whose. That game is offensive to me.
As a young African American woman growing up in what some naive people call a post-racial America, I am well aware of my past and the past of my ancestors. But I would never say that because my ancestors were slaves — because my ancestors were sprayed with hoses and attacked by dogs, hung by their necks from trees, chased barefoot through the woods by bloodhounds — that I am not a woman of privilege. I would never once say that because my ancestors couldn’t vote, weren’t allowed to read, were whipped by their masters, forced to pick cotton, and made to sweat under the sweltering Southern sun that I am not a woman of privilege.
Fortgang says in his essay that his father worked hard to afford him the opportunities he has today. Along the same lines, my mother worked tirelessly to assure I would get a better education. She worked multiple jobs in order to keep me from taking out loans. In that sense, I am very privileged to have had the opportunities afforded to me by her, and to graduate with minimal debt. That is the privilege of having a supportive parent.
So what do we mean when we say that people should check their white privilege? The white, feminist activist Peggy Mcintosh’s White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack states it clearly.
I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.
As far as I can see, my African American co-workers, friends, and acquaintances with who I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place, and line of work cannot count on most of these conditions:
1. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race. 2. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is. 3. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against my financial reliability. 4. I can swear, dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or illiteracy of my race. 5. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group. 6. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion. 7. If a traffic cop pulls me over…I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race. 8. I can be sure that if I need legal help, my race will not work against me. 9. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented. 10. I can choose blemish color or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin.”
This country was built on a foundation of laws that oppress those seen as “other.” I’m not just talking about Plessy vs. Ferguson. I’m not just talking about people being called Colored People, Blacks, Negroes, and Niggers — but also Fortgang’s ancestors being called Kykes. This country has made countless laws that do not protect people who aren’t white Christians from western Europe.
I’m talking about the Indian Removal Act, which led to the Trail of Tears. I’m talking about the Convict Lease System of 1883, which subjugated African American prisoners by forcing them to perform manual labor in mining, railroad, farming, and logging operations. I’m talking about the Black Codes, the vagrancy laws. I’m talking about Jim Crow. These pieces of legislature, these events, and these practices have led to the legal and institutionalized subjugation of people who aren’t Mayflower descendants.
Ervin Jefferson. Amadou Diallo. Patrick Dorismond. Ousmane Zongo. Timothy Stansbury. Sean Bell. Orlando Barlow. Aaron Campbell. Victor Steen. Oscar Grant. Jordan Davis. Kenneth Chamberlain. Abner Louiama. Alonzo Ashley. Trayvon Martin.
Any people who say that white privilege doesn’t exist must not know these names, these stories. Any people who have the audacity to say that white privilege doesn’t exist are the ones who are benefiting from it.
To deny the existence of white privilege is to deny the blatant acts of racism committed every day in this country. It is to ignore that 1 in 9 African American males will be incarcerated between the ages of 20-34. It is to ignore that 1 in 3 African American males between the ages of 20-29 has had an encounter with the criminal justice system.
It is to ignore the police brutality, the black men and women profiled, beaten, and killed by police everyday. It is to ignore the blacks who are charged disproportionate jail time for crimes white people commit and get probation for. It is to deny the effects of Stop and Frisk. If you see a cop car, is that cop there to protect you from others, or to protect others from you? As a person of color, I do not feel protected by the police.
Last month, Kwasi Enin, an African American teen from Long Island, NY was accepted to all eight Ivy League Colleges. I cannot count how many comments I read on Facebook posts complaining that “if he was White, people would say this is White Privilege,” or “he was only accepted because he was Black.” In this country as a person of color, you’ve got to be four times as good to get your foot in the door. And even then, you will still be subject to critics saying you don’t deserve what you’ve earned.
We’ve come to classify it as “Black Guilt.” In today’s society, Black people are now being made to feel guilty for receiving jobs over white colleagues or gaining entry into colleges over white students.
So what do we mean when we ask white men like Fortgang to “check their privilege?” First and foremost, we are asking for simple acknowledgement about the way our society works. We are asking for people to admit that there are still things you are given as a white person that are privileges. Yes, you may not have asked for them — but they were given to you regardless.
I am a 22-year-old African American woman pursuing a Masters degree with no criminal record. I have one speeding ticket from my hometown. Yet I have been followed through stores for fear of me stealing. I have been pulled over by police and asked where I’m going, for no apparent reason. I have been blatantly ignored by clerks in stores. I have been called a Nigger. I have gotten weird looks when I walk through predominately white neighborhoods. I have gotten looks of disgust when I walk down the street holding my white boyfriend’s hand.
White privilege is hard to see because, indeed, it is like an invisible cloak: It protects you from the perils of being a minority in America.
So please, don’t try to make me invisible by pretending that it doesn’t even exist.
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Post by Admin on May 6, 2014 12:08:11 GMT
MEET THE POSTER CHILD FOR ‘WHITE PRIVILEGE’ – THEN HAVE YOUR MIND BLOWN
APRIL 29, 2014
He’s 20, he’s white, and he’s a freshman at Princeton University.
According to the ethnic and feminist studies college students and professors who frequently and vehemently complain that this country is steeped in racism and sexism and is only fair and just and equal for white, heterosexual males – he is the poster child for so-called “White Privilege.”
His name is Tal Fortgang, and just eight months into his Ivy League experience, he’s been told on numerous occasions to “check his privilege” – a phrase that has taken social media social justice campaigning by storm.
It is meant to remind white, heterosexual males that they have it so good because they’re white, heterosexual males. They haven’t faced tough times, they don’t know what it’s like to be judged by the color of their skin.
Oh, but they do.
Those sick of being labeled are the very same ones doing it to others, and Tal Fortgang has a powerful message for them.
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Post by Admin on May 6, 2014 12:09:09 GMT
Uncheck Your Privilege
May 1, 2014
Any headline that includes the phrase, “then have your mind blown” is probably unworthy of being opened. So when we heard that The College Fix had just published an op-ed by Princeton freshman Tal Fortgang titled “Meet the Poster Child for ‘White Privilege’—Then have your Mind Blown,” our reaction was a collective Eye roll. By “have your mind blown,” The College Fix must have meant “spend the rest of your night clenching your fists and fuming over the sad irony that those who don’t understand the meaning of white male privilege are the ones who benefit most from it.”
We decided that we had to respond to this op-ed, which completely misses the point and grossly misinterprets the meaning of privilege and the way it functions.
Tired of feeling like he has to apologize for being a white male, Fortgang is frustrated that his family history is rendered irrelevant by discussions which link skin color with privilege. But nobody is asking for personal apologies for historical injustices—that’s literally not the point.
To be clear, nobody wants, or needs, more nuanced understandings of race than people of color. The fact that family history and other factors that influence a person’s station in society are often ignored in favor of skin tone just speaks to how reductionist our understanding of identity can be.
Fortgang accuses those who tell him he’s privileged of toeing the line of racism. (Let’s forget for a minute the inherent contradiction in the idea of “racism against white people.”) His success, Fortgang argues, should not be diminished to a socially constructed narrative of white male privilege and ascribed to “some invisible patron saint of white maleness.” But what he fails to understand is that this “patron saint” of white maleness isn’t so invisible—historically, socially, and politically, institutions have protected and supported white men. Recognizing the fact that white men benefit from the kinds of racist and sexist structures on which American society is built isn’t meant to diminish his accomplishments. It’s meant to remind us that white men don’t have an inherent predilection for success—the odds have just been stacked in their favor.
Fortgang continues to criticize those who ask him to check his privilege, saying, “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.”
First of all, meritocracy is a myth. We are not all born with the same opportunities to succeed—and that is not a conspiracy.
But perhaps the most infuriating and telling part of Fortgang’s op-ed is its ending: “I have checked my privilege. And I apologize for nothing.” Except, he clearly hasn’t checked his privilege—because he doesn’t even understand what it is. The very act of writing a defense of white privilege (and a condemnation of those who point to it) is in itself an exercise of the very entitlement he refuses to acknowledge.
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Post by Admin on May 6, 2014 12:10:42 GMT
Check Your Dogmas A young Princetonian takes on the P.C. establishment.
MAY 6, 2014
Tal Fortgang has offended the offense-takers. The Princeton University freshman wrote an essay for a student publication, since reprinted in Time magazine, skewering the progressive trope “check your privilege.”
If you haven’t been told to “check your privilege,” you don’t spend enough time on college campuses, or on progressive websites, where the phrase is considered a debate-clinching rejoinder suitable for any occasion. It is an injunction to admit the privilege — whiteness, maleness, heteroness, middle-classness, and some other -nesses — behind any uncongenial point of view.
On websites, people with presumably too much time on their hands do for “checking your privilege” what Judith Martin does for etiquette — describe an elaborate system of rules for how the privileged can appropriately interact with the nonprivileged. It’s Emily Post meets Michel Foucault. Or “Ms. Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Politically Correct Behavior.”
One feminist writer explains that “just as you have to learn a bunch of new terms for things like science class, so too do you need to do so for non-privileged groups.” It evidently never occurs to them that treating the “non-privileged” as an alien class incapable of having normal interactions with other people is itself deeply insulting, but all is fair in the fight against privilege.
After being told to “check his privilege” a few times, Fortgang writes, he checked the family background that had produced the rank privilege he enjoys as a white, male Princeton student. He found grandparents who barely escaped the Nazis and came here with nothing, a father who earned his success, and parents who passed along their faith and belief in education.
“That’s the problem with calling someone out for the ‘privilege’ which you assume has defined their narrative,” Fortgang writes. “You don’t know whose father died defending your freedom. You don’t know whose mother escaped oppression. You don’t know who conquered their demons, or may still [be] conquering them now.”
The push-back against his essay — which has generated incredible attention, including a profile of Fortgang in the New York Times — has featured the snotty in the service of the ridiculous. The collective response could be summed up as “Please, try to check your privilege again.”
Fortgang has been accused of objecting to the mere insistence that he be polite to people different from him, although there’s nothing in his piece that justifies rudeness. He has been attacked as making himself out to be a victim, “the Rosa Parks of Ivy League white guys,” although all that he’s asking is that people judge him and his views on the merits. He has been told that he doesn’t get just how privileged he is, since he has never suffered — and presumably never will — the travails of his grandparents.
But Fortgang doesn’t deny that. His essay acknowledges all the privileges he has had; only he considers them a good thing. What he writes about is the process whereby — to accept the Left’s stilted terms — the socioeconomically nonprivileged become privileged in this country.
If “check your privilege” were merely a call to be grateful for what we have, or to acknowledge the struggles of people who start with nothing or are considered outsiders, it would be unremarkable. But it carries the noxious assumption that race, class, and other characteristics determine your worldview, and it is used as a cudgel against one point of view. If a white person says affirmative action is a wondrous tool of justice, or a male says we desperately need more legislation to fight the “pay gap,” he is unlikely to be reprimanded about the nefarious hidden influence of his privilege.
Tal Fortgang scored a direct hit against one of the more mockable expressions of political correctness, although it won’t make a difference to the people who come up with and try to enforce these ever more absurd strictures. They never feel compelled to check their inanity.
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