Colleges around the country are now hosting “privilege walks,” where students take steps forward and steps back on the basis of whether they have certain “privileges” — and a lot of the items on the “privileges” list are really kind of weird.
The University of Michigan has posted on its website a list of the “privileges” the moderator calls out during the walk.
Among them:
1. “If you were embarrassed about your clothes or house while growing up, take one step back.”
2. “If you have tried to change your speech or mannerisms to gain credibility, take one step back.”
3. “If members of your gender are portrayed on TV in degrading roles, take one step backward.”
4. “If you can walk past a construction site without being looked up and down or catcalled at, take one step forward.”
So, basically, anyone who has ever gone to school in a bright orange sweatshirt with flowers on it (not that I’m talking about myself or anything), only to feel humiliated, could technically step back for item 1 regardless of family income. For item 2, anyone who had not used an f-bomb during a job interview. As for item 3, anyone familiar with characters like Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin, or actually pretty much most TV dads would realize that everyone in the room could step back regardless of gender.
Note: Nowhere on the list is there any mention of mental illness, drug addiction, homelessness, parental abuse, or approximately 9 million other things that a person could be suffering from that are arguably worse than having to deal with a construction worker calling out, “Good morning!.”
#share#Do you see how deceptive this could be?
Based on this list, someone could end up at the front of the line because he is white and a guy and grew up in a nice home with both parents, and the assumption would be that he had the most “privileged” upbringing — even if, say, one of those parents was abusive, or both were.
#related#Of course, that’s not to say that people of certain economic and racial backgrounds don’t face difficulties because of those backgrounds. Of course they do. But the list of of struggles and adversity that could potentially hold a person back is a very diverse, complicated one — and saying that some are worth mentioning while others aren’t could be more harmful than helpful. An open discussion of all difficulties would no doubt be a better way to go about it than this nonsense . . . shouldn’t that be obvious?
In any case, at least U of M warns that the exercise “can be very triggering” and that you should not participate “unless you are sure you have plenty of time to debrief and reflect [on] what individuals experienced during the privilege walk.”
Campus Reform reports that the University of Iowa and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will be hosting similar events in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. day.
— Katherine Timpf is a reporter at National Review.