Perhaps we "privileged" folk wouldn't get so incensed about the term if it weren't constantly employed as an argument-ending sledgehammer. "Check your privilege" means "shut up, you have no right to speak because of your skin/income/gender/etc".
Ironically, the concept of "privilege" is pushed the hardest by those who want to classify and subdivide the population into little bureaucratically-approved boxes, thus perpetuating the idea that we are all different from each other.
I don't see what's so difficult about the idea that we should all just personally try hard to treat everyone on their merits, without having some pestering know-it-all breathing down our necks to make sure that we're doing it in the officially-approved manner.
Edit: @freakonom (I can't reply because the thread was killed) you really, catastrophically don't get it. Your goals are laudable, but the one-sided "conversation" (really a lecture) that you want to have is counterproductive, and results in all sides becoming defensive and polarized. That's what happens when you take your eyes off the actual goal (equality of opportunity) and focus on feel-good self-aggrandizement.
Ironically, the concept of "privilege" is pushed the hardest by those who want to classify and subdivide the population into little bureaucratically-approved boxes, thus perpetuating the idea that we are all different from each other.
I don't see what's so difficult about the idea that we should all just personally try hard to treat everyone on their merits, without having some pestering know-it-all breathing down our necks to make sure that we're doing it in the officially-approved manner.
Edit: @freakonom (I can't reply because the thread was killed) you really, catastrophically don't get it. Your goals are laudable, but the one-sided "conversation" (really a lecture) that you want to have is counterproductive, and results in all sides becoming defensive and polarized. That's what happens when you take your eyes off the actual goal (equality of opportunity) and focus on feel-good self-aggrandizement.