s/o White Privilege: NYT: At Princeton, Privilege is

[LoveTrains]

www.nytimes.com/2014/05/03/nyregion/at-princeton-privilege-is-a-commonplace-b-misunderstood-or-c-frowned-upon.html?ref=us

At Princeton, Privilege Is: (a) Commonplace, (b) Misunderstood or (c) Frowned Upon

By MARC SANTORA and GABRIEL FISHERMAY 2, 2014

Photo
: Tal Fortgang, in Manhattan, wrote an essay after a classmate told him to “check your privilege.” Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times


It is a familiar phrase on college campuses, often meant to serve as conversational kryptonite, the final word in an argument to which there is no response.



“Check your privilege.”



But Tal Fortgang, a Princeton freshman from Westchester County, had a response.



After class recently, he was explaining to a classmate his views on welfare and his concern about the national debt, when he was told — not for the first time, he said — to check his privilege.



He thought about the phrase, what it meant and last month penned a pointed essay in a conservative campus publication, The Tory.



“The phrase, handed down by my moral superiors, descends recklessly, like an Obama-sanctioned drone, and aims laserlike at my pinkish-peach complexion, my maleness, and the nerve I displayed in offering an opinion rooted in a personal Weltanschauung,” he wrote.



His essay touched a nerve.



He was hailed on the right, his piece used as evidence that America’s universities are hopelessly liberal. Conservative bloggers and national publications picked up his cause.



He appeared on Fox News this week, in a segment labeled “Student Takes Down Liberals Over ‘White Privilege’ Debate.”



The reaction on the left was equally strident, with other students challenging his position and saying his own words were evidence that he had failed to understand the phrase.



Josh Moskovits, also a freshman at Princeton, said the phrase was not commonly used and argued that Mr. Fortgang did not even understand what privilege meant.



“In my opinion, it’s sort of a manufactured right-wing idea that people are running around left wing colleges saying ‘Check your privilege,’ ” he said. “He would have to say, in my opinion, something incredibly outrageous to get someone to say ‘Check your privilege.’ ”



Mr. Fortgang, 20, said he often saw the phrase used on Facebook after he has voiced conservative opinions.



In his essay, Mr. Fortgang, who is from New Rochelle, N.Y., uses his own family’s powerful story as evidence that his “privilege” should not be assumed. He tells how his grandfather fled the Nazis and was forced into exile in Siberia and how his grandmother was sent to a concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen. “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,” he wrote. “Maybe that’s my privilege.”



His grandfather and father built up a wicker basket business, he wrote, and emphasized education in the home.



“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,” he wrote. “But that is a legacy I am proud of. I have checked my privilege. And I apologize for nothing.”



All the attention he has received since then has been somewhat surprising, Mr. Fortgang said, adding that he was not always happy with the kind of people who have rallied around him.



“I am sure there are some really racist white supremacists who point to me as a hero on the college campus,” he said. “That is not me. I don’t have a racist bone in my body.”



His father, Stanley, said he was proud of his son and was moved by the essay but had urged him to be wary.



“I told him it is very important that you unequivocally disassociate yourself with things you don’t believe,” he said.



On campus and beyond, a common criticism of Mr. Fortgang’s essay was that it missed the point of how privilege affects one’s worldview.



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“I was in shock because it said ‘checking my privilege,’ and I concluded after reading that he had been ultimately unsuccessful in examining his own privilege,” said Briana Payton, a freshman from Detroit and the project manager for the college’s Black Student Union.



While his family’s story was moving, she said, and not something to be trivialized, it was not something that affected his daily experience.



“He doesn’t know what it feels like to be judged by his race,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve met an African-American who believes that they are judged solely by their character.”



In defense of Mr. Fortgang, Zach Horton, a junior from Houston and former editor in chief of The Tory, said that “check your privilege” was the kind of dismissive phrase that sticks in the mind of freshmen, who are new to the school and new to the politics on campus.



“He has some very interesting thoughts,” Mr. Horton said. “He will stir the pot and get people thinking and get people talking.”



Mr. Fortgang said he had read and heard from many critics but stood by what he had written.



“I know a lot of the criticism centers around the idea that meritocracy is a myth,” he said.



“I don’t mean to minimize the impact privilege can have on the outlook one has, but there are many other factors that should not just be written off.”



Still, he said, after a year at Princeton, he hoped his views were starting to develop “some real nuance.”



“I am learning how to learn,” he said.

[aurora]

May 3, 2014 8:50:35 GMT -5 LoveTrains said:

www.nytimes.com/2014/05/03/nyregion/at-princeton-privilege-is-a-commonplace-b-misunderstood-or-c-frowned-upon.html?ref=us

"I don’t mean to minimize the impact privilege can have on the outlook one has, but there are many other factors that should not just be written off.”

Isn't minimization exactly what he did?

Of course there are white males who work very hard for their success. That doesn't mean that they don't also experience privilege. The two are not mutually exclusive.

[irishbride2]

May 3, 2014 10:02:40 GMT -5 @soudesafinado said:

If I never hear or read this phrase again, it will be too soon: "I don’t have a racist bone in my body.”

My bones are friends with some black bones so they aren't racist.

[Deleted]

May 3, 2014 10:02:40 GMT -5 @soudesafinado said:

If I never hear or read this phrase again, it will be too soon: "I don’t have a racist bone in my body.”

I have a few racist bones in my body. 

[mouse]

He's shocked shocked! that white supremacists would latch on to this.

But that doesn't mean he'll reconsider his thinking.

Huh.

[katfco]

While I think the phrase "check your privilege" is dumb and counterproductive, if this kid is having people tell it to him that often, it seems like he deserves to hear it.

[penguingrrl]

Dude, this is the time for some introspection. If that many people are telling you to check your privilege it's probably apt.

I know plenty of people who both worked hard and benefited from white privilege. They are not mutually exclusive at all.

[ESF]

At first, I was willing to give this kid the benefit of the doubt, that he's just been a victim of freshman pretentiousness.Now that he's gone on Fox News to whine about how women's studies majors are mean to him, I have to conclude he's a serious douchebag and a fucking moron. While the audience may be cheering him on because he's a victim, he's just feeding into the anti-intellectual hysteria. He is now exhibit A in why higher education, or elite education, is something to fear, deride, and dismiss.

You know who went to Princeton? Michelle Obama. The wing nuts are going to figure out a way to blame this on her. Just wait.

[meshaliuknits]

May 3, 2014 11:08:30 GMT -5 @soudesafinado said:

BUT HE'S LEARNING HOW TO LEARN PEOPLE!

Why didn't that happen in kindy?

Sent from my EVO

[ttt]

I'm really sorry guys, my tibia are totally racist. It's such an embarrassment at parties when they start making jokes about slavery.

[cosmos]

Yeah my grandparents and relatives were in the same boat, buddy. I know we American Jews love to cry persecution, but methinks the phrase "never forget" doesn't mean you get to be a douche. And it certainly doesn't mean you aren't a privileged American.

Now, maybe I'd have some sympathy if you said you were from the Ukraine instead of NY.

[sushi]

What about racist boners?

[bronxgirl]

The more I think about it, it makes me really angry that he is using his family's horrific past to excuse his obnoxious behavior. How dare he exploit the suffering of the Holocaust to defend his douchebaggery. I also found it funny that he felt the need to specify that his grandfather's company made wicker baskets. If there is one thing the world needs more of it's wicker baskets. Thanks Tal's grandfather for stepping up and filling the void.

[emisi]

So then he apparently said this on twitter:

[ttt]

May 4, 2014 10:00:26 GMT -5 emisi said:

So then he apparently said this on twitter:

Is this concept really so hard to understand? It's like, I can talk shit about my mother, but YOU can't talk shit about my mother, KWIM? Why is it so hard to understand that someone saying something about their own group is not the same as someone else saying it. And that's not even getting into the whole history of it, etc., since obviously that is way impossible for them to get. 

[decemberwedding07]

May 4, 2014 10:00:26 GMT -5 emisi said:

So then he apparently said this on twitter:

It's true.  Being white is soooo hard.  You try to use one little, tiny racial slur, and everyone is all, "You can't say that!"

Also, I'm not under the impression that it's always ok for black people to use that word, either.  There are AAs who don't like hearing that word used ever, right?  And it's not like AAs are running around law firms high-fiving the other AAs who work there and yelling, "Yeah, my [you know what word goes here]!"  The difference is that it is never ok for a white person to use that word.  If you don't understand why, I'm not sure that there's any point in explaining it to you.  It is 2014.  You shouldn't need this explained to you.  If not being able to say that word is a huge issue for you, then you're even more of a jackass than I originally thought.

[bronxgirl]

Holy hell this kid needs to STFU.

[decemberwedding07]

Also, given the tweet above, I think it's safe to say that we can stop saying, "If this guy was actually being told to check his privilege on a regular basis, then he probably deserved it," and just say, "If all people said in response to the inane things that he has been saying on a daily basis for years was "check your privilege, dude," then he should consider himself very, very lucky."

[cosmos]

Super super douche. Ugh

[gpw]

Haven't read all the responses, but wanted to make note of the Detroit representation.

[gpw]

May 3, 2014 13:34:46 GMT -5 ttt said:

I'm really sorry guys, my tibia are totally racist. It's such an embarrassment at parties when they start making jokes about slavery.

I am having the same problem with my ulna.  It's so embarrassing.  

[Deleted]

My first time sleeping on the couch was telling sushi that white and male privilege didn't exist.

[sushi]

May 4, 2014 12:41:59 GMT -5 gpw said:

May 3, 2014 13:34:46 GMT -5 ttt said:

I'm really sorry guys, my tibia are totally racist. It's such an embarrassment at parties when they start making jokes about slavery.

I am having the same problem with my ulna.  It's so embarrassing.  

My zyphoid process can't be let out in public.