I'm pretty sick of this 'check your privilege' movement from the SJW crowd. Its seeped into 'recognized' university 'programs' here in Canada and devolved into minority students gripping about the prejudice they've faced for a half hour or so, while majority 'SWM' ? straight white male ? students sit in their huddle talking about how peachy keen life is for them. The two huddles then get together so that the minority students can vent aggressively at the 'majority' students. And if any of those majority students have something to say, they're told: ?Check your privilege.? This isn't something they're told to make them think, it's something their told to make them shut up.
I've heard it both ways. I've heard: ?I spend so much time trying to teach these people how privileged they are and what they do to others, that sometimes I just don't want to talk about it anymore.? Which is fine... except you've started a dialogue and if you're done talking and the conflict remains, what else is there? So this is not valid in my opinion. And to avow that this term is used to silence discourse should sound warning alarms to anyone seriously interested in furthering social causes.
What I see in the Check your Privilege movement is all tactics and no strategy. Which is to say; minorities have found what they hope is a tool they can use to silence the majority. I see no strategy for implementing anything beyond silence though. And when talking fails all that's left is silent grudges; undertones of hate that can only build to overtones of hate and beyond... until dialogue is reestablished and with it some hope for something of a result.
I've also heard the argument that it makes people consider how privileged they are... Which I find not only disingenuous but counter intuitive. Such terms are used aggressively. Defensive people don't consider their privileges, they consider themselves under attack and in a potential position of weakness.
Finally I find the whole idea that at a glance you know what privileges someone has, to be bigoted. Some one may have the privilege of living in a city like mine and having access to public transportation such as the subway. This isn't a privilege if your claustrophobic and can't use the damn thing. And you don't see that at a glance in a person unless the first sight you get is them refusing to go into a small space. That a right exists doesn't mean it is exorcized or even valued by the individual possessing it. How many people DON'T vote? Some people like high stress environments. Some people like hot wax. Some people doubtless don't like aspects of society, even ones that others embrace wholeheartedly or wish they had the opportunity to. We're all different, we all have different underlying wants and different needs. Just because two people want to go to school doesn't mean the both want to take an economics course.
To my mind at best the Check your Privilege movement is to be a short lived and foolish flash in the pan ? they happen. At worst it almost seems like an active attempt to promote animosity between groups of people who need to be brought together, not shouted apart.
