What an awful opinion piece! The fact it is on Time.com is part of the "white privilege". lolz.<p>The reason why they say "check your privilege" because we should foster the notion that non-white people have a different American experience than white people.<p>If a minority got into Stanford, there is a thought that probably goes into everyone's mind, that they had an advantage because they were a minority. White people don't have that same stigma.<p>It's a mind set. It's understanding that there are our society has a problem, and that it needs to get checked at the door.
Link to a good response: <a href="https://medium.com/p/12a3018d5abc" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/p/12a3018d5abc</a>
(nvk posted the response but I don't know how long the two submissions will be together on the index page).
Lumping people together as "white" is as ridiculous as doing the same for other races. Think about the within-cluster variation inherent in such a group for a second, it's mind-boggling.<p>When I first heard from a Chinese friend that they label all Westerners into a single group, I first laughed at the naivete, then sobered up at the cluelessness of the assertion. Of course, there's <i>some</i> truth to it: From a super high level perspective all non-Chinese to the West <i>are</i> a single group (defined by their non-Chinese-ness), question is: in what context is such a crude abstraction useful?<p>But, worse, aside from being non-useful, such stereotyping by (some) thinkers is the very thing they criticize in despise in others, so it's an error in thinking, too!
As the dailyshow asked a while ago. Are Jews really white?<p>The answer in America is that they are white+, the answer in Europe is one of guilt and resentment. The idea that you should check the same privileges the world over is incredibly Americo-centric and racist.<p>Should a Basque check their privillage for being white while having been under constant genocidal pressure for close to 300 years? Should a Turk in Crimea do that because their ancestors were murdered time and time again by the Orthodox, while one in Anatolia shouldn't even though their grandparents contributed in one of the first modern genocides against the Armenians?<p>Privilege has nothing to do with skin color and everything to do with economic and social status. The Blacks of the US aren't disadvantaged because they are black, it's because they are poor and serve as the default criminal class. A place that the Irish had a hundred years previously. To pretend that it does is a way for spoiled college kids to feel they are making a difference in the world without doing anything.