‘Check your Privilege’ Debate

A fairly typical rant by Rex Murphy on ‘check your privilege’:

It is a direct effort to impose guilt where gratification should reign. It is to make those who work hard, try to conduct themselves responsibly, who apply themselves to study, feel that none of these attributes, none of their honest effort, has earned them success. Why should all a young person’s effort and sweat, holding on to a moral code, and determined application to make something of their life be turned against them, be denied its efficacy, and everything praiseworthy about a person be dismissed as merely a gift of their ethnicity?

What’s most obnoxious about this trend is its blatant attempt to chase effort, merit, industry and determination off the field entirely. The privilege movement seeks to sully and taint  the commonplace eternal virtues, so that when one of us sees another happy in marriage, perhaps, or successful in business, and maybe temperate and easy in private life , we should all shout in envy and hate. It is bitterly ironic that the anti-racist message has been reduced to this: You have all that you have only because you have white skin.

It is the cheapest form of racism, no subtlety at all … and it finds fullest expression in those academic institutions most attuned to any whiff of prejudice. Only in the very best universities would you ever be able to find so stupid a thought being given such frantic attention. And Orwell’s famous taunt about some ideas being so stupid only an intellectual would support them is sadly truer now, by far, than when he wrote them.

Rex Murphy: Check your bigotry

Which in turn, provoked a good debate, starting with Dawn Black in iPolitics (pay wall):

Asking people to check their privilege isn’t a matter of keeping certain voices out of the conversation – it’s about ensuring that all voices, especially those that have historically been kept silent, have the chance to be heard. It’s not about blaming white people for their achievements – it’s about knowing that we can’t end racism until we understand how and why it continues to exist. It’s not about humiliation – ultimately, it’s about empathy.

Social inequality is, unfortunately, a fact of life. Recognizing that inequality exists – and trying to find ways to eliminate it – is a fundamental part of responsible citizenship. Trying to shut down discussions of privilege won’t make that privilege disappear; it will only make inequality harder to fight.

Check your privilege, Canada:

And echoed by Deborah Douglass in the National Post:

Let’s be clear: To acknowledge the role of privilege does not negate the role of self-determination and personal responsibility. They are understood. Even I cringe at new speech-policing concepts such as trigger warnings, which are used to control speech on university campuses. And those on the losing end of privilege could stand to watch how they couch their argument when calling it out. Often, they, too, possess some form of privilege. I know I do. Sometimes people elevate their victimhood to suggest that’s the extent of their value and comes across as a form of emotional blackmail others cannot access.

The beautiful thing about being part of a democracy is the notion of perfecting it. The least we can do is to open our minds and hearts. That’s a nice way of saying that if you’re white or male or upper-middle class or athletic or skinny or good-looking or privileged in any way, you cannot go on assuming everything that comes to you belongs only to you, and that there’s something wrong with those who aren’t as privileged.

It is said that to whom much is given, much is required. That same famous source also cautions against suffering fools, which means challenging foolish notions and weeding out racism or sexism in all its nuanced and structural forms.

Weeding out racism

One of the issues Minister Kenney and his staff had with multiculturalism policy and G&C proposals was reference to “white power,” an essentially similar concept.

One can view ‘check your privilege’ as another way to slow down one’s thinking and assumptions, to shift from System 1 automatic to System 2 deliberative thinking, to use Kahneman’s phrase, to allow for more open-ended discussion. I think Douglass’ comments have it about right; Rex has remained within his System 1 “mental prison” to use a Gilles Paquet term.