Privileged Ignorance out of Princeton

In a recent article in the Princeton Tory that attracted much outside attention, Princeton freshman Tal Fortgang launched a deeply concerning attack on the modern liberal concept of privilege. How one could compare reminders to check one’s privilege to “Obama-sanctioned drone” aimed “laser-like” at his “maleness” perplexes me.

The Alger-esque rags-to-riches story Fortgang presents fundamentally misunderstands the contemporary and modern state of social inequality and mobility in the United States—in reality, inequality and social mobility problems are driven by systematic societal failures and unearned benefits rather than personal failings.

Merely pointing out the sociological genesis of these problems does not mean that I hate America, entrepreneurs, or the rich. Nor does acknowledging that structural fact direct hatred toward Fortgang, his father, his skin color, or his “maleness.”

Being an English Tory, I am far from a left-wing radical. But I believe that the new vocabulary of the New Left allows us a better way of describing the unearned benefits certain communities receive. I do not necessarily agree with the New Left’s solutions to the problems presented by pervasive privilege, but I would not deny the concept’s utility, let alone attack it for shutting down debate or for having a persecutory nature.

The weakness of Fortgang’s argument is revealed through the implications of his key suggestion: that the American dream is attainable for all, because it was obtained by his father, once a “penniless Jewish immigrant.” According to this view, it was his resolve, spirit, character, hard work, and sacrifice that accounts for his father’s success. Because, of course, those roughly 50 million Americans under the poverty line are just too lazy, spiritless, and characterless to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. If only they had been blessed with the same attitudes!

That’s nonsense. To put it simply, many Americans do not have any bootstraps to pull themselves up by.

The implicit worldview in this attack not only writes out the unfortunate importance of gender and race but also the educational achievement gaps, structural economic problems, counterproductive tax and welfare incentives, and prejudice and identity hierarchies of all sorts. In Fortgang’s worldview, America “cares not about religion or race, but the content of your character.” So, must he say to blacks who are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites that they ought to work on the “content of their character,” because America does not care about race? How must he account for the gender pay gap? Is it that women are not working hard enough, or something else?

Why did such a misled article generate great attention? It has heralded responses or references as far and wide as the New York Times, the New Republic, the Guardian, and Time magazine. I think that the answer lies in the fact that Fortgang is an articulate retort to the conventional millennial view, even if his views are badly flawed.

The consensus among our generation is the Obama line that we must work progressively toward a more perfect union, and that each generation must renew America as a place of the many rather than the privileged few. Whilst I love pluralism, and am happy to have questioned our own orthodoxies regarding checking privilege, the article does a remarkably bad job of challenging it.

His attack is correct in one regard; those who check other’s privilege do not know the prior “struggles” of an individual or family currently with privilege. But for those who have “struggled” to the top of the power structures, it comes down to them to show some solidarity with those currently facing struggles. Rather than expunging these struggles, he should focus on recognizing and then helping those who will never have the prospect of education from a top school, a good job, or a stable family, specifically because of the systematic failures of our society which limits such social mobility.

Fortgang should be ashamed of the ignorance of a statement that racism and sexism are mere “conspiracies.” No, the “racist patriarchy” cannot be credited with “holding my hand throughout my years of education and eventually guiding me into Princeton.” But it can go a long way in explaining why you had someone to hold your hand, and how a higher education, let alone an Ivy League one, is even a possibility for you.

Instead, Fortgang should apologize not for his privilege but for his wild misunderstanding of the Other America in which the cards are very much stacked against citizens—a fact which may be all too easy to forget from our privileged Ivy League walls.

Nicholas J. Bonstow ’17 lives in Hurlbut Hall.