That the author of the article in question was able to write it to completion and publish it so underscores that which he seeks to highlight as fallacy that it's difficult to believe that we have not just been collectively trolled.
Princeton doesn't offer Cognitive Dissonance as a major, and yet MAJOR cognitive dissonance is the only possible well from which such denial and self-aggrandizement could spring. As such, the targets of the author's assessments need not be considered because his entire argument is false, and delusional.
Saint Xavier University sociology professor Jacqueline Battalora asserts that Tal Fortgang's essay simply highlights the fact that many people do not truly understand the nature of privilege, and that he should not be demonized for his views. God bless her.
The minds that authored the following counterpoints hold no such view, for they accept that you can not teach one who has no interest in learning. The snide tone of the essay, with it's light dusting of right wing political views, makes it very obvious that Mr. Fortgang has no interest in taking honest stock of the subject. No, he is just, as many post 2012 election white males, ready to cancel his subscription to white guilt. And as evidenced by the digital back-patting and reposting of the dreck in question, there's never been a better time.
"Behind every success, large or small, there is a story, and it isn’t always told by sex or skin color."
When certain groups of people manage to go through the gauntlet of life and come out ok, their success stories are always praised because of their sex or skin. With hundreds of years having passed, why is it a big deal whenever a person of color, a female, a person with a different sexual orientation, or all of the above accomplishes something? The answer is because that's not how the system we function in is designed to work.
In school admissions offices and human resource departments and various important settings across the country, there is a topic that is whispered about or avoided altogether until the objects of said topic are safely out of earshot. Recently a point of emphasis (and failure) in the supreme court, the topic is affirmative action. Affirmative action was put into place because without it, employers and schools discriminated against capable people without regard for their qualifications, but rather based solely on the complexion of their skin and the anatomy between their legs. Across the board, without actual legislation demanding inclusion, people without "pinkish-peach" complexions were routinely denied fair opportunities to prove their worth.
The world views and credentials of the othercultures were often dismissed in lieu of maintaining the status quo established by those in power. No matter how hard you worked or how smart you were, it wasn't good enough. Life saving inventions and genius strategies went ignored lest they be presented by someone matching the gender and hue of the men in power. Bars were intentionally raised and quietly lowered by people in power not only to help one specific group but also to hinder everyone else. White males overall conspired to keep pulling strings and control the distribution of opportunities so the U.S. Government had to step in and "Check your privilege".
"I do not accuse those who “check” me and my perspective of overt racism, although the phrase, which assumes that simply because I belong to a certain ethnic group I should be judged collectively with it, toes that line. But I do condemn them for diminishing everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life, and for ascribing all the fruit I reap not to the seeds I sow but to some invisible patron saint of white maleness who places it out for me before I even arrive. Furthermore, I condemn them for casting the equal protection clause, indeed the very idea of a meritocracy, as a myth, and for declaring that we are all governed by invisible forces (some would call them “stigmas” or “societal norms”), that our nation runs on racist and sexist conspiracies."
Before you took one breath of air, before you ever laid eyes upon your mother's face, before you took one step, said one word, or conjured one thought, a system had been set in place for you. Not for everyone. But for you.
Simply by virtue of being born a white male, it was never a question that Princeton was an option for you, let alone college. After all most of the people that attend look like you, and almost all of the people that administer it look like you. Glance at photographs of your school's distinguished alumni, and they most certainly almost exclusively resemble you.
By virtue of being born a white male, you will never have to know what it's like to have the officers that are the sworn protectors of your community also be one of the biggest threats against you. How can equal protection not be a myth when the protectors consider you the enemy?
By virtue of being born a white male, you were given the seeds you sowed. You were given the plow, and the tillers, and the almanac to know what to plant when and where. That is a far cry from having to find your own way to scratch a living out of the only barren patch of ground you had access to, making bricks with no straw.
In highlighting the fact that you put in hard work to get where you are, you unwittingly prove that the ultimate privilege of being a white male is that hard work is enough for you. There are no societal or institutional decks stacked against you.
"Perhaps it’s the privilege my grandfather and his brother had to flee their home as teenagers when the Nazis invaded Poland, leaving their mother and five younger siblings behind, running and running until they reached a Displaced Persons camp in Siberia, where they would do years of hard labor in the bitter cold until World War II ended. Maybe it was the privilege my grandfather had of taking on the local Rabbi’s work in that DP camp, telling him that the spiritual leader shouldn’t do hard work, but should save his energy to pass Jewish tradition along to those who might survive. Perhaps it was the privilege my great-grandmother and those five great-aunts and uncles I never knew had of being shot into an open grave outside their hometown. Maybe that’s my privilege. Or maybe it’s the privilege my grandmother had of spending weeks upon weeks on a death march through Polish forests in subzero temperatures, one of just a handful to survive, only to be put in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she would have died but for the Allied forces who liberated her and helped her regain her health when her weight dwindled to barely 80 pounds."
Sometimes the holocaust, Jewish peoples struggles within and afterward, and their successes since are spoken of in comparison to Black people and the lack thereof. One has not to diminish the destruction that the holocaust caused to acknowledge the fact that twelve years from the construction of the first concentration camp in Dachau in 1933 until the end of the war in 1945 is not proportionally analogous to multi-generational systemic oppression spanning literally centuries.
It was 246 years from when slaves where first brought here by the Dutch in 1619, until the ending of the Civil War in 1865 - and more than that if you consider that many slaves didn't find out that they were indeed free for a number of years after the end of the Civil War. All atrocities being equal, substantially more can be lost in 246 years than can in 12.
The awful struggle of the Jewish peoples, however horrific, would not be traded by them for the centuries of pain, suffering and hopelessness historically and currently visited upon and passed down by African Americans, and no sane person could blame them.
Also worthy of note was the Nazis trial run of a holocaust on the Africans on Shark Island in the early 1900s.
9-11, 3000 killed = Never Forget
Jewish Holocaust 6 million killed = Never Forget
Trans-Atlantic Slave trade, 20 million killed = Forget about it
"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—to paraphrase the man I never met: “I escaped Hitler. Some business troubles are going to ruin me?” 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."
That's fantastic that your grandfather had the opportunity to begin a wicker business. Are you aware that actually having a business is a privilege? You see my mother and father's parents were not afforded that privilege. My great aunt's business was burnt to the ground when angry white people destroyed Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Where you aren't faced with the roadblock of discrimination and racism you will be surprised by the opportunities that open up. Many black families were not able to acquire wealth because grandparents and great-grandparents had nothing to pass on to the children. Within the institutional frameworks of this country, we suffered a denial of basic human rights that your family never had to endure.
So while it's very respectable that your forebears were able to put so much time, money and effort into their honest business, unfortunately many in this country were systematically, maliciously, and purposely stripped of that opportunity.
And why send the kids to Jewish day school? Was there something wrong with the schools that many unprivileged were relegated to? The same schools that most African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans attend?
They were sent to Jewish school to strengthen their sense of identity. That in turn, like fertilizer, sets the stage for achievements.
And what of black identity? What has been done for 400 years to destroy it? Is that impact not going to be considered? We are all running a race, you with shoes, we without shoes. Does that invalidate how hard you ran? No. But to deny the unevenness of the playing field is to be complicit in a system that preserves outcomes based on race.
"That’s the problem with calling someone out for the “privilege” which you assume has defined their narrative. You don’t know what their struggles have been, what they may have gone through to be where they are. Assuming they’ve benefitted from “power systems” or other conspiratorial imaginary institutions denies them credit for all they’ve done, things of which you may not even conceive. You don’t know whose father died defending your freedom. You don’t know whose mother escaped oppression. You don’t know who conquered their demons, or may still conquering them now."
The privilege whose existence you deny and we live, Mr. Fortgang, is twofold.
1. That of the past and thus all the privileges enjoyed (or not) because of your race.
2. That of the present/future. A Black person who is accomplished WILL have graver and more challenges in life than a white person on equal or lesser footing. This is the present and future problem and the one I am concerned about for myself and my children. When you walk out of your door, your default privilege is based on how people recognize you. White male? you already have a leg up on anyone else and they don't have to know who he is or what he has done in the past.
"The truth is, though, that I have been exceptionally privileged in my life, albeit not in the way any detractors would have it.
It has been my distinct privilege that my grandparents came to America. First, that there was a place at all that would take them from the ruins of Europe. And second, that such a place was one where they could legally enter, learn the language, and acclimate to a society that ultimately allowed them to flourish.
It was their privilege to come to a country that grants equal protection under the law to its citizens, that cares not about religion or race, but the content of your character.
It was my privilege that my grandfather was blessed with resolve and an entrepreneurial spirit, and that he was lucky enough to come to the place where he could realize the dream of giving his children a better life than he had."
So mind-numbingly ridiculous is this statement, it's hard to know where to start. You're praising a country for offering equal protection by law to its citizens during a time where certain citizens, indeed, did not have equal protection by law. Only your white male privileged soul would allow you to proudly vomit such profound contradictions into the public record. Certainly you are aware that when your parents came to this country, only a specific subsector of society was even allowed to enter a voting booth (amongst a host of other places?).
Yes. Your grandparents, as privileged whites from Europe, were allowed to enter a place where other whites from Europe had successfully pillaged and built on the back of slave labor. Surely that had nothing to do with your parents ability to rise from the ashes of war-torn Europe. Certainly, if your grandparents were blacks from Senegal, they would have been afforded the same opportunities. Surely.
The very truth of the matter is that your entire existence in this country is based on privilege. The U.S. government (along with other western governments) legislated the type of immigrants they wanted. If your grandparents had been Haitians, for instance, you likely wouldn't even be in this country. Either you're intellectually bankrupt on this point or being extremely disingenuous. Take a look at the history of laws concerning immigration and naturalization in the United States. Your parents were privileged to fit the desired profile.
"But far more important for me than his attributes was the legacy he sought to pass along, which forms the basis of what detractors call my “privilege,” but which actually should be praised as one of altruism and self-sacrifice. Those who came before us suffered for the sake of giving us a better life. When we similarly sacrifice for our descendents by caring for the planet, it’s called “environmentalism,” and is applauded. But when we do it by passing along property and a set of values, it’s called “privilege.” (And when we do it by raising questions about our crippling national debt, we’re called Tea Party radicals.) Such sacrifice of any form shouldn’t be scorned, but admired.
My exploration did yield some results. I recognize that it was my parents’ privilege and now my own that there is such a thing as an American dream which is attainable even for a penniless Jewish immigrant."
While your grandparents were building their business, they may have taken the time to read about the Tulsa race riots that destroyed a socially and economically vibrant black Greenwood District. Or maybe they didn't, as it was omitted from historical record for 80 years after.
Would it be your view, Mr Fortgang, that those destroyed communities didn't have resolve and an entrepreneurial spirit? Perhaps they were just unlucky to be born in a place where their own government sanctioned vigilante attacks on them.
Also, Jewish people have the benefit of being able to blend in. The common eye cannot to look into a room of white people and spot the Jewish; to even intimate the possibility of such is sort of racist. But the same eye instantly recognizes difference in President Obama among pictures of his fellow American presidents.
Italians have changed their names from Rosetto to Rose allowing them to blend in, and some Jews did the same, but no amount of name changing could allow me or anyone in my family to slip into the community unnoticed and make our way. Mr Fortgang's grandfather may have come here penniless, but the world he walked into did not have laws forbidding him to learn nor prohibit anyone to teach him. The fact that he even knew his grandfather is a privilege that many slaves did not know, unless their "grandfather" was their own master.
Environmentalism? Privilege? What legacy could one pass down when you were stolen and spent a lifetime in bondage in a world where it is forbidden for you to know anything but the basics required to do your job and take care of the masters? Families were ripped apart by trading, being placed on completely different continents than their loved ones. Fathers in Haiti and the Caribbean while mothers were being brought back up to America via Louisiana, their children being sprinkled all across the country like ash after a fire. The "privilege" of passing down the vivid details of their struggle to descendants was not available to them.
Slaves who tried to retain their African traditions were threatened with violence or death. Most credible historical sources note that a slave even learning to read or teaching a slave to read or write lead to punishments up to and including death.
"I am privileged that values like faith and education were passed along to me. My grandparents played an active role in my parents’ education, and some of my earliest memories included learning the Hebrew alphabet with my Dad. It’s been made clear to me that education begins in the home, and the importance of parents’ involvement with their kids’ education—from mathematics to morality—cannot be overstated. It’s not a matter of white or black, male or female or any other division which we seek, but a matter of the values we pass along, the legacy we leave, that perpetuates “privilege.” And there’s nothing wrong with that."
How can values be passed on if home isn't there? When home is destroyed? And when these things happen because of the color of your skin?
Let's go back to the Civil Rights Movement. A large success, no? But when the system removes one obstacle, it places another one in the way: Enter the War on Drugs.
From the early 1970s to the present, the prison population has increased dramatically. Most of the offenders are non-violent offenders. Most of the non-violent offenders are black people.
Passing on values and traditions is hard when you are locked up for what other people aren't locked up for. It's hard to pass on the value of hard work and education when the hard work is not offered to you because of manufactured crimes stopping you from getting hired -- as if racism weren't enough.
Example: White man aged 19 is busted for a drug offense. He gets the case dropped to a misdemeanor and probation. Black man aged 19 is bused for a drug offense. He gets the felony charge and jail time. Even if he doesn't go to jail, the felony is bad enough.
There is no need to go back further in history. The Civil Rights Movement speaks for itself. Unfortunately, white supremacy evolved after the movement. The old Jim Crow (1876 to 1965) has become the New Jim Crow. Just as its predecessor before it, the New Jim Crow interferes with values being passed down in the African American community.
It's hard to talk to your children or grandchildren about values if a person is screaming into a bullhorn while you are trying to talk. That screaming is the systematic racism that exists in America.
"Behind every success, large or small, there is a story, and it isn’t always told by sex or skin color. My appearance certainly doesn’t tell the whole story, and to assume that it does and that I should apologize for it is insulting. While I haven’t done everything for myself up to this point in my life, someone sacrificed themselves so that I can lead a better life. But that is a legacy I am proud of."
Racism is NOT about skin color just as feminism is NOT about moustaches. Racism is about creating and preserving the gains of white privilege.
And you are right, people did sacrifice themselves so that you could lead a better life. A great many of whom were Africans brought to America that built this capitalistic society from which you benefit in ways we still can't.
So as much as you reject the notion that white privilege has worked in your favor, as much as you want to poke your chest out and tell everyone of the struggles of your family to make it in America, as much as you want to convince the world at large that your privilege had no bearing on your accomplishments, as much as you want to believe all of those things to be true, you know that they are not. Everyone who is cheering for you, knows this as well; indeed, this group lie is business as usual. Black people have decried white privilege for eons to deaf ears. You, a white male, write a single refutation it and it is a national topic of discussion, extending ears to you that have never been available to countless actually qualified journalists of color. Your ill-conceived piece, snarkily and arrogantly cobbled together in an intellectual vacuum, actually proved the opposite of your intended point.
Funny, because we were unable to find a School of Irony at Princeton either.
Signed,
Collaborative Black Voices
and if I was on over the weekend, completely missed the thread.
