A story popped up today during my Internet perambulations. It involved a teacher demonstrating the concept of privilege to a classroom. The teacher placed a trash pail at the front of a room of seated students, gave them each a piece of paper, had them crumple that paper and try to toss it into the trash pail. When some students allegedly complained that the ones in the front row had an advantage, he pointed out that this was an example of privilege. He then questioned the front-row students and in their answers demonstrated that they didn’t recognize their privilege the way the the students in the back recognized their lack of privilege.
The story’s veracity and the veracity of the reporting of the students’ complaints might be in question, but the intended message isn’t. Your starting point in life, if it’s better than that of others, is to be deemed a privilege. Not a birthright or simple good fortune, both of which are neutral. Privilege, as in you have been bestowed with something that has been denied to others. This viewpoint introduces an externality into the mix. It implies giving, and sets the groundwork for justifying taking some of what you’ve been given in order to counterbalance the presumably unjust benefit you’ve received from that privilege.
The privilege the story challenges is one that’s relatively easy to change by outside intervention. The teacher could seek to reorganize the class seating in a semicircle, and give each person an equal distance to traverse with his or her throw. But what of the other privileges that some students possess? Some are likely to have better hand-eye coordination that others, or better vision, or greater arm strength, or the benefit of having practiced this very action time and again. It’s virtually impossible for there not to be any relative physical advantages or disadvantages among the students. What of physical conditions that vary across the student group? Someone might have an injured shoulder, or some debilitating condition that makes it hard to hold or throw a piece of crumpled paper. What then? Why is there no suggestion that those who are “privileged” to have health, or experience, or certain physical attributes that facilitate the accuracy of their throw feel undeserving of those privileges? Should the marathon runner with the narrow hips and lanky frame feel privileged over the runner who’s brawny and heavy boned, and offer him a lead at the start? Should the tall basketball player feel guilt that his opponents are shorter than he is? What of smart people? Should they forego the fruits of their intellect and the relative ease with which they solve problems because others struggle more?
Check your privilege is a phrase used by social justice warriors and other self-important types. The phrase clearly intends to establish privilege as an epithet, as derisive, and as something to be embarrassed about. It’s intended to make people believe that there’s an immorality in being born into a better circumstance than others. It serves the same purpose, albeit more overtly, as the classroom exercise. It’s intended to make people feel bad enough about whatever advantage someone else thinks they have to allow it to be taken away.
Being born on second or third base is, however, mere happenstance. Being born to parents who have managed to succeed and to better fulfill that most basic of biological urges – to provide for one’s progeny – is not something to feel ashamed about. If there’s shame in any of this, it would be in failing to embrace the advantages one’s accident of birth provides. If you’re born to well-off parents, if you’re provided with quality education and opportunities, your greatest source of shame should be to fail to capitalize on that starting point. Your parents’ success should be a source of pride, and the benefits it provides should be a focus for gratitude, a source of motivation, and something to honor through effort. Parents who look to provide a better life for their children are fulfilling one of the most fundamental human motivations, and anyone who suggests there’s anything wrong with this really needs to flush out his or her brain pan.
There is another insidious message in privilege. The privilege of starting point is a direct indictment of your parents’ success and their desire to use it to help you rather than what some will call society. Progressives and statists don’t like the individualistic aspect of this parent-child relationship, and they have long sought to undermine it and supplant parents’ roles with the state. Lenin and his Bolsheviks sought to replace young people’s natural inclinations toward familial loyalty with loyalty and fealty to the State. Public education seeks to homogenize all that students are taught. Opposition to school choice and to home schooling serves the same purpose. Hillary Clinton famously quipped (purportedly quoted an African proverb) that “it takes a village to raise a child.” Estate taxes are a direct attempt to undermine a parent’s ability to care for his children. Accusations of privilege are intended to undermine individuality and the primacy of the individual in favor of a least-common-denominator collectivism. Given collectivism’s sordid historical record and its monstrous death toll in the 20th century alone, this doesn’t seem like a goal worthy of pursuit and acclaim.
The backbone of the American Dream is equality of opportunity, the idea that anyone can chase dreams without disparate barriers standing in his or her way. The privilege-shamers have corrupted that idea into the belief that anyone who starts with a comparative advantage isn’t entitled to do so, and that society/government should act correctively. They have also sought to replace equality of opportunity with equality of outcome, since there is no degree of “leveling” that will guarantee all players will achieve the same success. Privilege-shaming is part of that effort. It’s intended to weaken individuals and make them more pliant, so that when that which is theirs is taken away, they’ll protest less.
As for the exercise in tossing a paper ball into a trash pail, several people have already noted that there was nothing to stop any student from simply walking up to the pail and dropping the paper ball in. That, by the way, is how so many have achieved the American Dream – by finding better ways to do things. Unless the teacher forbade it or set barriers in the way. That, by the way, is exactly what our government does to those who wish to climb the economic ladder.
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