Perhaps the most annoying of the recent non-think bumpersticker yammerings is “Check your privilege.” The idea, if I can grace it with such an inappropriately high-falutin’ term, is that straight white men should feel bad about themselves, because of this fantastical substance called “white privilege” that somehow confers success upon them without effort. It seems to be somewhat along the same lines as “the essential appleness of apples” or some such philosophical dreck.
One example of this was blathered forth in a post on Jezebel, one of those places that has professionally offended people who like to blather on about this sort of thing:
In the simplest, crudest metaphor I can think of, let’s say you’re a fully abled person in a race against a man with only one leg. You train a long time, run really fast, and beat him. No one is saying you shouldn’t be proud of working hard or running so fast; all we’re really asking for is that you admit that maybe having two legs f***ing helped a little bit.
The problem with the metaphor, and the whole privilege argument as a whole: having two legs isn’t an advantage… it’s the baseline. It’s what you are supposed to have. Someone with two legs who runs a race and wins against a one-legged opponent would have to be some kind of idiot for feeling guilty for beating the one legged opponent.
Sure, some people have bad breaks in life that hold them back. But you know what? They are not helped by trying to drag down those who *didn’t* have those bad breaks. An ugly guy who can’t get a date isn’t likely to do much better in life if he goes around berating the good looking fellers, trying to make them feel bad for scoring all the chicks and trying to guilt them into sharing. It… just doesn’t work that way.
We all have something that holds us back, something that other people are born with. And that problem… is *our* problem. Not the other fellers.
“Check your privilege” is just the latest version of screaming “racist” at someone. It’s a way to shut down the debate by shutting up one side.
And at last, here ya go:
The proper response to the privilege gambit is laughter. The super-serious zealots of progressivism hate being laughed at, but there’s really no other appropriate response outside of a stream of obscenities. The privilege game is designed to circumvent arguments based on reason and facts and evidence, so the way to win it is to defeat it on its own terms.
Call: “Check your privilege!”
Response: “What you call ‘privilege’ is just me being better than you.”
They won’t like it. It will make them angry. Good. Because tactics like “Check your privilege” are designed to make us angry, to put us off-balance, to baffle us and suck us down into a rabbit hole of leftist jargon and progressive stupidity.
Don’t follow them. Mock them. Accuse them of adhering to a transphobic cisnormative paradigm and start shrieking “Hate crime!”
