Seriously, Check Your Privilege

Know that the Lord is God.
It is he that made us,
and not we ourselves;
we are his people,
and the sheep of his pasture.
Psalm 100:3


From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.
Luke 12:48

It would have been more appropriate if Tal Fortgang, a first year student at Princeton University, had published his essay on White Privilege on April 1st rather than April 2nd. And it would be easier to understand why the essay went viral on the internet.

Writing in The Princeton Tory, he detailed his objections to the phrase, “Check your privilege,” which admonishes the speaker to recognize that his or her opinions may be influenced by the privilege associated with his or her station in life. This, he argues, negates all the hard work he did to get where he is, and dismisses his opinions simply because he is a white male.

He accuses those who raise the issue of privilege of “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.”

With all due respect to the seeds he has sown, to speak seriously of “all the hard work I have done in my life” seems a bit over the top. Tal Fortgang is in his first year of college. High school may have seemed like an eternity, and for some young people it is really hard, but it’s difficult to see it as a lifetime achievement.

Fortgang says that he decided to “check his privilege” to see how his past had brought him to his present situation. “I decided to take their advice,” he writes. “I actually went and checked the origins of my privileged existence.”

Of course, we know that he didn’t go to check his origins because someone told him to check his privilege, but it does make an engaging introduction to his family story. And that story is compelling. His grandfather escaped from the Nazis only to spend years in a forced labor camp in Siberia. His grandmother weighed just eighty pounds when she was rescued from Bergen-Belsen at the end of the war. They came to America and succeeded through hard work and sacrifice. They lived out the American dream.

It’s a great family story. And I mean that quite seriously.

But the idea of privilege is not about whether our grandparents worked hard. It is about recognizing that the place we occupy in society is not (entirely) of our own making. For Tal Fortgang, part of what it means is that he owes a great debt to his grandparents.

He probably would not have gotten into Princeton without hard work, but for most young people, all the hard work in the world would not have gotten them admission to Princeton or any of another several dozen elite colleges. He was born with intellectual abilities that others simply do not have. His parents supported him and taught him to value education. They probably gave him an environment that stimulated his curiosity. He was helped by his teachers and his school, and his hometown. He benefitted from his socio-economic status. There are very few kids at prestigious colleges who come from economically disadvantaged homes, though many feel disadvantaged because they compare themselves to their even wealthier classmates.

Everyone at Princeton, regardless of race, gender, religion, or the economic status of his or her family, has been gifted with enormous privilege.

Questioning his privileged surroundings, he writes: “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—his wife and kids—to earn that living. I can say with certainty there was no legacy involved in any of his accomplishments. The wicker business just isn’t that influential. Now would you say that we’ve been really privileged? That our success has been gift-wrapped?”

Yes, Mr. Fortgang, that was and is part of your privilege. Your father sounds like an exemplary individual, and he worked hard to give you the life you now enjoy.

The reminder to “check your privilege” is not meant to make us feel guilty. It is meant to remind us that race, gender, class, and a host of other factors beyond our control have helped us to become the people we are. And that where we are in the socio-economic landscape influences how we see the rest of the world.

We hope that we have been good stewards of the gifts we have been given. We hope that we will add to the cultural legacy we have inherited. And we hope that by being aware of the gifts we have received we will take a kinder view of those who have less than we do.

Ordinary People

"They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted."Matthew 23:6-12
Yesterday I picked up copies of my medical records from one specialist, in order to bring them to another specialist. As I walked to my car I started reading the report, which began by saying, “Mr. Trench is a very pleasant 63 year old man . . .”

Ouch.

Of course, it could have been worse. Pleasant is better than unpleasant. In fairness to the doctor, he meant no harm. And I guess I could be happy about the “very.”

But I don’t think I have ever been described as “very pleasant.” It was a humbling moment to recognize that in the eyes of this specialist, I was just a “very pleasant 63 year old man” with a collection of symptoms. Even on the basis of a short interview, I would hope to be more than that.

Shortly after I went through the defense of my dissertation and received official confirmation that I had earned a Ph.D., I shared the good news with my grandmother. Her first question was when can you use it? I told her I could use it right away, and asked if she wanted me to explain Kant’s Categorical Imperative. “No,” she said, “I mean when do people start calling you ‘doctor’?”

Three are at least two lessons here. I am one of the privileged ones. I am often “greeted with respect in the marketplaces.” Within our church family, I tend to avoid formalities. I tell the adults to call me, “Bill,” and the kids to call me, “Pastor Bill.” I don’t want to be introduced as “Reverend” or “Doctor.” But giving up a title is very different from having it taken away. The first lesson is, it’s probably good for me to have that experience.

The second lesson is that lots of people go through life without getting much respect. Some do jobs where they get very little affirmation. Others live with disabilities. Some are faced with circumstances which deny any possibility of what we call success. I was experiencing something that others experience for a lifetime.

The truth is that no one is ordinary. Each of us is special and unique.

Years ago I was asked to do a funeral for a man who did not belong to our church. I went to the calling hours at the funeral home, out of respect for the family and because I know that during that time I can often get a sense of who the person is. I stood in line to pray at the casket and to greet the family. When I knelt at the casket I could hear the family talking with friends about this man whom I had never met, and about how special he had been to them. And I prayed silently, “Lord, do not let me trivialize this life.”

Education and the Reproduction of Privilege

Good and upright is the LORD;
therefore he instructs sinners in the way.
He leads the humble in what is right,
and teaches the humble his way.
All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness,
for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.
They will abide in prosperity,
and their children shall possess the land.Psalm 25:8-10, 13
Rick Santorum made headlines by calling President Obama a “snob” for insisting that every American should go to college. What the President actually said was that every American should commit to a year of training beyond high school. He talked about four year colleges, community colleges, trade schools, and apprenticeships. And as it turns out, the former Senator endorses that same goal.

Higher education is an important factor in economic success. And its importance is increasing. Thirty years ago, college graduates earned an average of 50% more money than those with only a high school diploma. Today that difference has increased to 80%.

Americans have believed in education as the great economic ladder by which even the poorest citizens could climb into the middle class. But recent data indicate that may no longer be true. Education, in fact, may solidify and increase class barriers.

In an essay in Monday’s New York Times, Thomas B. Edsall talks about college as an institution that reinforces class stratification. Citing a report by Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, and co-author of a report on how college access increases inequality, Edsall observes that at the most competitive colleges almost three quarters of all students come from families in the top quartile of income and that only three percent come from the bottom quartile. As Carnevale puts it, “The education system is an increasingly powerful mechanism for the intergenerational reproduction of privilege.”

In the United States there are a little more than one thousand colleges classified as “competitive,” and almost exactly the same number of community colleges. But the student bodies of those two groups are from the opposite ends of the income scare. At the competitive colleges, nearly eighty percent come from families in the upper half of the income distribution. At the community colleges the same percentage comes from low-income families.

We like to think of the education system as a class-blind meritocracy. Standardized tests, like the SAT, don’t know and don’t care what a student’s family income is, or where her parents went to college. But in practice, SAT scores correlate closely to income. The higher the income, the higher the score. Those scoring at the upper end are on average, from wealthier families.

The problem is exacerbated by shrinking scholarships.

In the late 1960’s, when I was applying to college, my dad was the pastor of three small churches on Cape Cod. Our income was barely above the poverty line, but I received a full scholarship to Wesleyan University (tuition, room and board, and money for books). Need based scholarships at that level do not exist today. If I were applying to college today, I would get a “package” of grants and loans, with an anticipated college debt that would take decades to pay off.

This means that those rare students from the lower income levels who do have excellent grades and score well on standardized tests are far less likely than their more affluent classmates to enroll in college, and more likely to leave before graduation. Thirty years ago a Pell Grant (the federal scholarship program) covered 99 percent of the cost of community college, 77 percent of the cost at a public four year college, and 36 percent of the cost at a private four-year college. According to Education Week, today those percentages had dropped to 62, 36 and 15 percent. Grants are shrinking as costs are rising.

Since the founding of our nation, we have believed in the ideal of a “class-less” nation. We knew that there were gaps in income. But we believed in universal education as the best way to shrink those gaps and provide opportunity for every citizen. And the huge middle class gains after the Second World War, seemed to offer proof that the ideal could become reality. Today we face a series of economic factors which have made upward mobility much more difficult.

The system we have trusted to break through the barriers of class, now does just the opposite. As Anthony Carnevale stated, “The education system is an increasingly powerful mechanism for the intergenerational reproduction of privilege.” We need some serious reform if we are to reclaim our dream.