'Check your own privilege': Princeton freshman lashes out at reverse prejudice

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Princeton Tory: Checking My Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilegehttp://theprincetontory.com/main/checking-my-privilege-character-as-the-basis-of-privilege/http://theprincetontory.com/main/checking-my-privilege-character-as-the-basis-of-privilege/

There is a phrase that floats around college campuses, Princeton being no exception, that threatens to strike down opinions without regard for their merits, but rather solely on the basis of the person that voiced them. “Check your privilege,” the saying goes, and I have been reprimanded by it several times this year. The phrase, handed down by my moral superiors, descends recklessly, like an Obama-sanctioned drone, and aims laser-like at my pinkish-peach complexion, my maleness, and the nerve I displayed in offering an opinion rooted in a personal Weltanschauung. “Check your privilege,” they tell me in a command that teeters between an imposition to actually explore how I got where I am, and a reminder that I ought to feel personally apologetic because white males seem to pull most of the strings in the world.

The author, 19-year-old Tal Fortgang from New Rochelle, New York, is Jewish. His grandfather and grandmother survived the Nazi death camps, they came to the U.S. penniless and with no knowledge of English, and built a modestly successful business that, three generations later, has provided him the opportunity to go to Princeton. Yet the politically ignorant -- er, "correct" -- look at him and think "white privileged jerk."

How can they one minutes spew platitudes about the "downtrodden blacks" whom they actually care nothing about and then justify pillorying a white man for being white? How can anyone be so ignorant they do not see the parallels of their behavior to the bigotry of their own grandparents?