<p>Look, if “check your privilege” were only being used when people said super-clueless things on the level of “Let them eat cake,” I really wouldn’t have much of problem with it. But it has gone well beyond that.</p>
<p>New York Magazine coincidentally just posted an article about Harvard Kennedy School of Public Policy deciding to add training on power and privilege to its first year orientation after a protest by students decrying privilege: </p>
<p><a href=“Harvard’s Kennedy School Adds Privilege-Checking to New-Student Orientation [Updated]”>http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/05/harvard-adds-privilege-checking-to-orientation.html</a></p>
<p>The article links to a tumblr where students speak about their experiences with privilege, and it is indicative of the problem that I have with the concept. Several posts complain that race and gender don’t come up in class discussion enough, others complain that too many people give ignorant opinions on issues that they don’t have personal experience with, and another complains about feeling like a token and being expected to speak for an entire group.</p>
<p>So, to recap, “it is bad that we don’t talk about race and gender, but when we do, members of the majority really shouldn’t give their opinions (unless they tally with mine), and also shouldn’t look to me to speak up, because it makes me feel like a token and the class isn’t a safe space anyway.” No wonder the tumblr also includes posts by white men who say that they are afraid to speak about issues of race and gender for fear of having their opinions dismissed or causing offense.</p>
<p>Someone is upset that general leadership classes don’t include discussion of the specific challenges faced by mothers (note that the Kennedy School does have its own Women and Public Policy Program, and this year offered a course on Women and Leadership that included discussions of family leave and work/life balance issues). Someone else is upset that case studies focus on the US, Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia, but not “smaller , less populous low GDP island nations” (which only “rarely” come up - what injustice!). Then, we get into the realm of the subjective. A student claims his contributions are “systematically” less valued because he has an accent. Another claims that male students are routinely praised more than female students, whose raised hands are also ignored (which may in fact happen to an extent, but funny thing, I’ve been a female student my whole life in several different academic contexts, and I’ve never noticed).</p>
<p>There’s also a particularly interesting case of two competing entries. The first seems like by far the most compelling instance of privilege/microaggression/racism: a student claims that a white student was “nearly applauded” and later praised for his courage for admitting that he walks to the other side of the street when he sees groups of black men. Down the page, the white student responds - the context was that in a discussion, he mentioned an incident in which he was walking in a high-crime, predominantly African-America neighborhood in which several gay men had recently been beat up by groups of black teenagers. The student, who is a gay man, crossed the street upon seeing a group of young black men, offered that he felt guilty about using race in this way, and said that he thought it raised an uncomfortable question about how to balance concern for stereotyping with a perhaps legitimate fear. If he’s telling the truth at all, that shouldn’t be the kind of discourse that is beyond the pale at the Kennedy school or anywhere else. </p>
<p>There are ways of productively raising the topic of privilege. Maybe the orientation class on privilege will be one of them. This isn’t. </p>
Privilege and the need to be aware of it on occasion is not unique to any group.</p>