I get a feeling that we are witnessing the birth of a new genre of writing: articles by over-fed dumb rich kids who manage to attract enormous attention by writing whiny pieces about how upset they are that the world is a bit too complex for their understanding.
First, there was that Harvard kid who wanted to abolish free speech because it hurt her sensibilities. Now my blog roll is exploding with discussions of a piece by a Princeton kid who’s unraveling because somebody said something he doesn’t like to him.
I’m not troubled by these kids being confused and overwrought. They are young, feeling aggrieved is their natural state at this age. What I find strange is how seriously people take this kind of writing. I had colleagues who went into fits over the silly Harvard piece.
“If these ideas are gaining currency AT THE TOP,” one colleague said, “it’s just a matter of time before this becomes governmental policy.”
Many young people don’t handle the transition to college all that well at first. For the first time, they are not Momma’s little darlings but lost among many. So they erupt in disaffected tantrums. I work with students and I know enough about their emotional states not to take these outbursts seriously.
If you read the linked piece by the Princeton kid, you’ll see that there is such a wild mish-mash of unconnected bits of ideological talking points that all we can do is smile sadly and nostalgically for the times where we were just like this. But whatever we do, we shouldn’t take these tantrums seriously.
Clarissa's Blog 
It is too bad because the “check your privilege” line is really lame. Too bad the Princeton kid couldn’t come up with a witty or intelligent response to it. I think the ancestor of the aggrieved kids genre is God and Man at Yale.
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I know, I hate the line, too, as we are all well-aware. But you lose when you try to defeat it on the level of, “How dare you say I’m not a victim when I totally am?”
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Yeah, kinda like the cry of modern feminism
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No, the “let’s list our grievances” phase of feminism was relevant and productive in the 19th century. It’s incapable of producing anything of value any longer.
If only more people understood this.
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But the list seems to keep on growing, lol.
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Maybe you should give it a go Jonathan Mayhew.
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Yes, Jonathan, have you checked your enormous privilege lately? 🙂
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The tricky thing about the “Check your privilege” line is that it always puts one on the defensive and just begs for the response that lists one’s own victimizations. One needs maturity and intelligence not to go down that road.
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Here would be my response: I never know whether it’s supposed to be “check” as in “examine (something) in order to determine its accuracy, quality, or condition, or to detect the presence of something” or “stop or slow down the progress of (something undesirable).” Which of those meanings of the word “check” do you intend here?
I have, indeed, checked my privilege recently (in dictionary sense 1) and my privilege is intact and in great shape; thanks for asking.
The slogan seems designed to produce one of two or three unhelpful reactions: liberal guilt and conservative reaction, or the finding that one is not privileged is some other, non-evident way. (Or a combination of these reactions.) It’s likely that almost anyone can find some way (however minute) in which they are not privileged. Aha! Or, one learns to express the proportionate amount of remorse at one’s privilege, while coming up with a complex check list of ways in which one is or is not privileged.
Or the reactionary position that we live in a pure meritocracy.
The problem with the slogan is that it is an ad hominem in the pure sense. It is not what You just said, but the position from which you said it. Then the debate devolves into a debate around positionality itself. It becomes pure meta-debate.
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Thank you, Jonathan. This is brilliant. All I manage in response is always, “Are you really that stupid or are you faking it to annoy me?”
Privilege-checking is today’s version of original sin. People are bad just because of having been born. They can go to confession endlessly because the stain of the sin can never be entirely washed off.
This is what happens when you try to take away collective identity: people will devise inventive ways to identify.
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One problem with “check your privilege” is how imprecise it is. If someone tells me to consider how the racism or cissexism or class differences in the society I operate in have influenced my experiences, I can do some useful thinking on the subject. “Check your privilege” just works as a thought-terminating cliche.
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I love the idea of privilege as the modern “original sin.” But nobody is willing to die for the white man to redeem him for being white and male. 😉
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http://gawker.com/conservative-money-front-is-behind-princetons-white-pr-1571826318
“He’s called Palestinians “cowards” who are worse than Hitler and complained that he’d like to punch opponents of George Zimmerman in their “fat idiot faces.””
How do these idiots get all this publicity when brilliant writers/bloggers remain undiscovered by national media?
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I hope that by brilliant bloggers you mean me, of course. 🙂
I’m not shocked because the guy did identify himself as Tea Party in his piece. And unless he drops that soon, he will not be happy in college, even if that college is Princeton.
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I get paid to read and comment on the rambling musings of college students. I don’t do it for free.
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Exactly. And this time of year, I’m sure you have as much of it as you could ever need.
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I don’t know if this makes me perverse, clueless, arrogant, or what: when I examined my privilege, I was amazed to find how much of it I had, and found the check an empowering experience. I don’t think that’s how the phrase is usually intended to work, but I am still enjoying the effects of my discovery.
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Yes, it’s supposed to be enjoyable. What would be the point otherwise?
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Splendid 14th – 15th century gravatar, that. Do you use paleography in your job?
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I for one am not nostalgic for my days of stupidity.^ However, I still think that the “check your privilege” meme is similar to the old-fashioned “count your blessings” and “walk a mile in someone else’s shoe before you criticize them”. Really, there are so many clueless kids from wealthy families who think that because they started life at third base, they have hit a home run when they succeed, and worse, believe that the people who gets from home plate to first base are lazy slobs. Pure meritocracy is a myth in the USA. Just look at POTUS #43, George W. Bush, who got us into a useless war. Just look at the lying, cheating hedge fund and bank executives. It would show some maturity to realize that there are systemic advantages or disadvantages depending on your demographics and family of origin.
^ That statement assumes that I have left my days of stupidity behind. 😉
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If you inherit two generations of fairly extreme war trauma, unmitigated by any social security system or other social niceties, are you “privileged”? Situationally, I’m sure I was privileged, there probably isn’t any doubt about it. But psychologically, I was never in anything but an extremely dire state, especially after about the age of 12, when our historical circumstances took a turn for the worst. So I had to bring MYSELF up, effectively, whilst defending against a raging parent and a world raging against the perceived or actual excesses of my former nation. And on top of all of this, people kept saying it was a gender thing, that all these hidden circumstances were related to my condition of being female, which they hinted was a relatively deficient state.
But outwardly, I am the QUINTESSENTIALLY privileged person, because I seem to have been born in circumstances that most people would not have been able to have experienced.
I find the whole talk and assumption-making about what is or isn’t privileged to be entirely deficient on the basis of my experiences. Of course, if one’s calculations are based on something more solid that a few, scant facts, one might get closer to a very, very, schematic picture of broad-based privilege — who has it and who doesn’t.
But failing the ability to generate such a wonderful way of reading and understanding everyone in the word effortlessly, one may have to actually talk to people.
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I checked my privilege, and had it returned to me pressed, ironed, and scented with English peppermint — so much, in fact, that cats now present themselves to me in order to have a free hit of one of their favourite drugs, making me feel even more privileged as the Lord Piper of the Cats. 🙂
However, I am not of such a mind as to repeat the following indefinitely:
I WANT A PONY
“But I’m miserable and I want to inflict my misery on the world by making my false utopias into reality, so I deserve a pony!”
DO NOT BUY THAT KID A PONY 🙂
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