The “check your privilege” campaign is a social media movement that has been spreading among university campuses in the hopes that it will catalyze change and prevent discrimination. The campaign asks students to question their own privileges.
A lack of a privileged experience can result from discrimination based on race, sex, class, disability, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, age, and others. The generalized implications of the “check your privilege” campaign are brilliant because they cover all of these issues. The problem, though, is that this slogan is too broad to make the desired impact on its targeted audiences, which should include most of us to some degree.
It seems to me that despite the campaign’s attempt to increase the complexity of privilege, we still tend to drift towards the “I need this campaign because I am not a Caucasian, 30-year old, heterosexual, cis-male” argument. Surely, this demographic experiences a lot of privilege over other minority groups, and they need to be aware so that they can learn to mediate that issue. But there is more to understanding what privilege means in all of our lives than just this argument.
If we imagine a privileged experience of the world to be determined quantitatively through a checklist of how many privileges we have, then it is inevitable that there will be those who will score higher than others. However, are some privileges going to carry more weight than others? What score counts as being truly privileged? The issue is too complicated to be categorized into a pass/fail system.
There has been concern that the campaign could be used to silence Caucasian students. However, this shouldn’t be the case. Certain groups are going to feel targeted by the slogan but that is because of the negative perception we have of what privilege means.
The issue of privilege is too complicated to be categorized into a pass/fail system.
This negative perception of privilege is unfortunate, as it tends to shut down meaningful conversation. We all need to understand that being privileged doesn’t make you a mean and selfish individual; it just means that you have some advantages that others do not experience.
The “check your privilege” campaign is easily interpreted as only targeting the obvious groups. But we have to remember that just because you are part of a minority group doesn’t mean you don’t experience some privilege.
There are wide ranges of contributing factors to privilege. If you step out of Canada and compare our rights and attitudes with different groups in other nations, this becomes immediately apparent.
Examine your own privileges before pointing out someone else’s. That is the only way that each of us can begin to listen to the issues of other groups and to become cognisant of the problems that we may not encounter because of the privileges that each of us possess.
