![\"tal\"](\"https:\/\/objects-us-west-1.dream.io\/racefiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/tal.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nTwitter was abuzz with banter yesterday concerning Time magazine’s re-post of a Princeton Tory diatribe by student Tal Fortgang, entitled Why I’ll Never Apologize For My White Male Privilege<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n I checked it out and quickly understood why. Tal begins,<\/p>\n 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. \u201cCheck your privilege,\u201d 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. \u201cCheck your privilege,\u201d 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n After this less than promising start – something along the lines of starting a speech with the phrase, “let me tell you something else I know about the Negro…” – Fortgang shares the story of his Jewish grandparents who (just barely) survived the Holocaust before seeking refuge in the U.S. where they sacrificed greatly in order to provide a better life for future generations. And then Tal drops the bomb, adding,<\/p>\n Perhaps my privilege is that those two resilient individuals came to America with no money and no English, obtained citizenship, learned the language and met each other; that my grandfather started a humble wicker basket business with nothing but long hours, an idea, and an iron will\u2014to paraphrase the man I never met: \u201cI escaped Hitler. Some business troubles are going to ruin me?\u201d Maybe my privilege is that they worked hard enough to raise four children, and to send them to Jewish day school and eventually City College.<\/p>\n Perhaps it was my privilege that my own father worked hard enough in City College to earn a spot at a top graduate school, got a good job, and for 25 years got up well before the crack of dawn, sacrificing precious time he wanted to spend with those he valued most\u2014his wife and kids\u2014to earn that living…<\/p>\n That\u2019s the problem with calling someone out for the \u201cprivilege\u201d which you assume has defined their narrative. You don\u2019t know what their struggles have been, what they may have gone through to be where they are…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yup. That’s what he said.<\/p>\n I know many probably think that Tal’s seeming failure to understand the obvious distortion of the dynamics of privilege he committed here should be chalked up to the fact that he’s just twenty. However, The Princeton Tory<\/em> is a paper that means to cultivate right wing voices<\/a> in political media, and this isn’t Tal’s first time at bat for them. The guy has an agenda.<\/p>\n So, I’m going there. Here’s where you failed, Tal. I get that your grandparents made great sacrifices in their lives. Mine did, too. I won’t get into the details, but they suffered and sacrificed, believe me. My grandmother immigrated under difficult circumstances only to find that she would spend most of her adult life working under a man carrying a whip. And that’s just when she was in the fields cutting cane. She also had seven children who needed to be clothed and fed, and a husband who expected dinner on the table on time, no excuses (which, by the way, she might tell you was a powerful, life-defining exercise of male privilege on the part of someone who spent his entire adult life in a labor camp).<\/p>\n