Meet the Poster Child for ‘White Privilege’ – Then Have Your Mind Blown.
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.
All that “check your privilege” talk is just a silencing/shaming technique intended to cut off debate. This is an eloquent response, but “don’t be an asshole” is an entirely adequate one.
Well said by both gentlemen.
I saw a comment on the internet not too long ago that succinctly summed up this notion of “privilege”: What they’re shaming (at least in ethnic and feminist studies) is rational thought. I think Tal makes a good point that they’re shaming values as well, but I suspect the reason his fellow ethnic studies students and teachers are laying this on him is he’s making an argument of one sort or another that’s difficult to argue with. It reveals a vulnerability, and they want him to shut up, and “realize” that his values and rational thought are just the result of bigotry, and that he should give it all up. That’s pretty well it. It’s the “white” version of the charge of “acting white.” (Blacks have sometimes been tarred with “acting white.”) Tal is young, but it seems to me he’s smart, and someday he will figure this out.
Evan Sayet, a jewish comedian, wrote a serious book about this called, “The KinderGarden of Eden.” He also has talked about it in several internet videos, on the subject of “How the modern liberal thinks.” It’s pretty enlightening, because the way the modern liberal thinks runs counter to what would make sense from a conservative’s perspective. It comes from an assumption that rational thought, or a belief in anything that divides people into good and evil, actions as right or wrong, *is* the problem; that what is truly evil is any attempt to discern right from wrong, productive from unproductive, better vs. worse. It is a total attack on values, because values are seen as arbitrary, designed by some to advantage themselves, and subjugate others. Rationality is viewed likewise.